Magnolia Time

At the White House, the magnolias were in full bloom and a fountain, surrounded by orange tulips, splashed beguilingly. Gardeners gave the lawn its first spring trim, and the smell of new-mown grass wafted through the open windows of Dwight Eisenhower's office. The President, like most Americans, responded to the beck of spring, tried to fit a little fun into the pressing routine of work. Last week he:

P: Spent nine full hours (running right through lunch) in conference with members of the National Security Council and its seven civilian consultants. Their main topic: the recent Communist moves.

P: Sent Congress the third of his reorganization plans, a proposal to streamline the complex and far-flung mobilization agencies, bring them together in a central, permanent Office of Defense Mobilization, and nominated Arthur S. Hemming as director of the present ODM. Under the new plan, the Munitions Board and the National Security Resources Board would be abolished, and planning, production and stockpiling for defense would be left almost entirely in civilian hands.

P: Played 36 holes of golf, including one round with his new friend and old adversary Bob Taft as partner; Taft with a 94, Ike with a 93 lost to their opponents, a Washington attorney, John McClure, and Stanley Rowe, a Cincinnati elevator-company president.

P: Nominated Kenton R. Cravens, St. Louis banker and longtime friend of Treasury Secretary Humphrey, to be head of the Reconstruction Finance Corporation. Cravens' mission will be to bury the RFC by June 1954, transfer its shrunken functions to the Commerce Department.

P: Made public, through a White House announcement, the titles of his favorite books: the Bible, Shakespeare's plays, Mark Twain's A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court.

P: Put his medals, decorations and awards, including four sabers (one encrusted with diamonds, emeralds and rubies, the gift of Prince Feisal of Saudi Arabia) and two silver-plated, frontier-model Colt six-shooters, on display in his upstairs quarters.

P: Set in motion an order to strip an estimated 2,000 second-echelon Government executives of Civil Service protection, permitting Republicans to take the jobs.

P: Bade farewell to his old friend and wartime comrade, Field Marshal Viscount Montgomery, after telling Monty that his regiment, the Royal Warwickshire, had burned the White House in 1814.*

* Ike was wrong. The British force which captured Washington included no Warwickshires. The Warwickshire Regiment was more than 500 miles away in Toronto (then York), had recently participated in the Peninsular War, leaving many wounded and sick troops in Bordeaux.

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