Man of the Hour

Crowded as it was by the turbulent sweep of events in Hungary and the Middle East, the U.S. election nonetheless made history of its own. By a shattering and startling landslide of 457 electoral votes to 74 (Wednesday a.m.), the U.S. awarded Dwight D. Eisenhower a second term in the greatest personal vote of confidence since F.D.R. in 1936.

At home, a second term for Eisenhower-Nixon meant that a new political generation had come of age with promising concepts of how government ought to be run (see below). Abroad, the landslide showed foreign friends and foes that the U.S., with its skills, strength and spiritual potential, stood with astonishing unity beside a just, firm man who defines his policies in quiet phrases, such as: "Conscience rather than force is the key to action."

Even as the voters crowded to the polls, President Eisenhower was taking a stand for justice and law amid the tangle of a baffling and dangerous double crisis. On the one hand, Israel, France and Great Britain joined in an attack on Egypt (see FOREIGN NEWS), thereby creating a yawning breach in the Western alliance as the U.S. deplored the resort to force. On the other hand, the Russians were raging through Hungary, grinding down the anti-Communist freedom fighters, even gesturing menacingly in the direction of Hungary's neutral neighbor, Austria.

Eisenhower kept a close watch and a cool head. In stern and unequivocal language he warned Russia's Bulganin that any intervention by Russian troops in the Middle East war was "unthinkable"'; he added afterwards that any Russian move against Austria would be considered by the U.S. as "a grave threat to peace." Meanwhile he worked patiently to repair the physical and moral basis of the Western alliance, so as to confront the probing Russians with a united Western front. In a decisive speech on the crisis from the White House (see page 29), Eisenhower proclaimed to all sides: "There can be no peace without law."

By the day before the election the bits and pieces of the crisis were beginning to fit back into place as the British and French agreed to order a ceasefire. No nation, the free world had relearned, could afford to divert its attention very long or very far from the Soviets, always the threat, always implacable, always there.

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.