Disarmed Harold

Harold Stassen, the G.O.P.'s own Peter Piper, has picked himself a peck of pickled political peppers while serving as a presidential assistant on disarmament. First, he plucked himself a hot one when he led the drive to dump Dick Nixon from the 1956 presidential ticket. And then, five weeks ago, he served up his opinion that Nixon was indeed a 1956 liability, and that the Republicans could have won control of Congress if Massachusetts' Christian Herter rather than Nixon had been the vice-presidential nominee. Fellow Republicans glowered, wondered how long, O Ike, before Harold is sent packing. Last week Stassen's critics were pretty sure that the end was near, but strangely enough, not so much for reasons of politics as of policy.

More and more, Disarmament's Stassen has been crossing swords on policy with the State Department. Item: last December, while Secretary Dulles was in Europe, Stassen called a press conference and suggested, to the consternation of Dulles and U.S. allies alike, that both the U.S. and Russia might withdraw their forces from Europe. Last week Stassen and Dulles dropped in at the White House for a chat with President Eisenhower. When they came out, Dulles' sword was sheathed, Stassen was virtually disarmed. Announced Dulles: the President had directed Stassen henceforth to operate under policy guidance of the Secretary of State. Despite the fact that Harold will keep his Cabinet rank and membership in Ike's National Security Council and will head the U.S. delegation to the United Nations disarmament meeting in London this month, this switch of Harold's activities signified a definite movement in the direction of the pickle barrel.

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