The Human Pinwheel

From Miami to Minneapolis, through nine states and across 3,600 miles. Adlai Stevenson went whirling across the U.S. landscape last week, spouting sparks and smoke. He showered scorn and anger on all Republicans, but saved his biggest rockets to lob at Dwight Eisenhower and members of his personal and official family. Such pyrotechnics did not go unappreciated. Time after time, voices in his small but enthusiastic audiences cried out, "Give 'em hell, Adlai." And the new Adlai, when he heard, would grin and crack back: "I'm doing my best."

In his liveliest campaign week to date Adlai Stevenson:

P:Broadly suggested again that the U.S. should end the draft, which he described as "wasteful, inefficient, and often unfair." Then he hedged his bets, called for "a fresh and open-minded look at the weapons revolution and the whole problem of military manpower." P:Proposed a moratorium on H-bomb tests; the U.S. can detect Russian violations, and if "the Russians don't go along, then at least the world will know we tried."

P:Charged (with Harry S. Truman grinning happily on the platform beside him) that President Eisenhower was guilty of buck-passing and ducking the responsibilities of leadership: "Who's in charge here, anyway? Who, in this businessman's Administration, keeps the store?"

P:Braved a possible booing at Little Rock, Ark., instead was warmly applauded for firmly stating that he believed the Supreme Court decision on segregation "to be right; some of you feel strongly to the contrary, but what is more important is that we accept . . . that decision as law-abiding citizens." P:Proposed increased federal funds for school construction, more and better-paid teachers, and college scholarships-all without more federal "control over the content of the educational process." P:Charged, without naming him, that the President's brother, Dr. Milton Eisenhower, had "assumed special, if informal, responsibility" for U.S. relations with Argentina to the benefit of ex-Dictator Juan Peron, who pocketed $100 million in U.S. loans to Argentina.

At his press conference, President Eisenhower quietly set straight what was probably the most reckless blunder of the Stevenson campaign. The U.S. had indeed made a loan to Argentina, but it was for $130 million, not $100 million, said he. And it was made not by his Administration but by Truman's. Later in the week Secretary of State Foster Dulles underscored another pertinent point: Peron thrived in office all through the Truman Administration, fell from power during the Eisenhower Administration--which has propped up the new government with a total of $160 million in loans.

The blunder on Peron typified the difference between the Stevenson of 1952, a man meticulously concerned with facts, and the Stevenson of 1956, a man furiously concerned with winning. Last week, particularly when he discussed his concept of a "New America," Stevenson showed flashes of his old eloquent self ("Leadership in a democracy can be no more than the capturing of a people's power to realize their own best ideals"). But most of the time, he seemed more content to let the sparks shower merrily and fall where they might.

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