Back on the Job

White House Press Secretary James Hagerty was in a first-floor office chatting with Presidential Physician Howard McC. Snyder one morning last week when Dwight Eisenhower entered, dressed in tan slacks, a brown-checkered sports coat and brown loafers. "You going to your office?" asked Hagerty. Replied the President: "Yeah, sure. Let's go."

Seconds later President Eisenhower was back at his desk, starting one of his busier weeks after an upset stomach had laid him low for a day and set statesmen, stock-market investors and plain people around the world to looking anxiously toward Washington.

Rush & Fuss. The President's shortlived attack came after a hectic four days in which he flew to Florida, spent two days aboard the carrier Saratoga, worked on and delivered a major pep talk to Republican leaders meeting in Washington, and drove to Washington's American University to deliver a speech (in praise of the U.S. Foreign Service) while receiving an honorary doctor of laws degree. Over and above all else, the President was fretting about two items of substance: 1) the future of his legislative program, especially military and foreign-aid appropriations; and 2) the wrangle with U.S. allies over Harold Stassen's clumsy disarmament negotiations, which had provoked beyond ignoring the kind of family fight that Ike hates most. Ike's crowded schedule may have thrown him off his diet; the most popular theory, mentioned by John Foster Dulles, was that it was the blueberry pie he ate the night of his illness. And there was also the theory that the President, like many another man under pressure, had been made susceptible to stomach upset by a slight case of nerves.

Between midnight and 6 a.m., the President vomited three times. At 7, he received a glucose and saline solution intravenously to restore body liquids. But electrocardiograms showed no recurrence of his heart trouble, and medical specialists satisfied themselves that his ileitis was not kicking up again. At the first EISENHOWER STRICKEN headlines, the Dow-Jones stock averages tumbled 4.91 points in an hour, but increasingly optimistic medical bulletins soon had Wall Street--and everybody else--feeling better. Major John Eisenhower, driving to Florida for a vacation, was told it would be all right to keep going. White House Staff Chief Sherman Adams, visiting in Vermont, was told that he could stay in New England the rest of the week, as planned.

The Price of a Cough. But it was not until the President had returned energetically to work that White House staffers were convinced that trouble had passed. Reason: they are aware of a close and direct relationship between 1) the President's sense of physical wellbeing, and 2) the force and vigor of U.S. foreign and domestic policy. In that sense, one of the most debilitating of President Eisenhower's illnesses was his naggingly persistent cough last winter. Said a White House aide last week: "For a while, he didn't think he was ever going to get rid of the damned thing, and it was hard to make him put into the job the time that he must put in to make it work." That is the most plausible explanation for Ike's letting the flap over budget cutting--which was actually a Democratic-Conservative Republican attack on the very basics of his program--get away from him. Not until the cough wore off, with a resulting lift in the President's spirits, did he again start to assume strong-handed control.

With that record as background, the President's post-ache activity gave his staff special cause to smile. Last week he:

P:Entertained at two 8 o'clock breakfasts 82 House Republicans with a "soft sell" approach designed to stimulate backing for his program through good fellowship and informal discussion. Table-hopping between groups of five, the President put in plugs for his defense and foreign-aid programs, heard Ohio's Representative Clarence Brown claim that his state's Congressmen "would all get hung" if they voted for the Administration's school-construction bill. There was even some joshing about the stock market's reaction to Ike's stomachache. When Indiana's Charles Brownson remarked that it was a great day for selling short, Ike laughed and replied: "Yes, if I could only have known it in advance." Then he added: "Gee, I was miserable."

P: Nominated Civil Defense Administrator Val Peterson, 53, former (1947-53) Republican governor of Nebraska, to become U.S. Ambassador to Denmark. Named to replace Peterson was another ex-Midwestern governor: Iowa's Leo Hoegh, 49, a thrice-decorated World War II lieutenant colonel who helped set up Iowa's civil-defense program. Good Ikeman Hoegh was defeated for re-election in 1956.

P: Greeted at the White House a 40-member Negro delegation from the Copperville, Md. African Methodist Episcopal Church, led by his valet, former Army Master Sergeant John Moaney (see cut). CJ Received from Republican National Chairman Meade Alcorn a report that the G.O.P. has a reasonable chance to add eight House seats in 1958 to the nine presently held by Republicans in the South and Border States.

P: Warmly approved plans for the first U.S. visit in history of a reigning British Queen: Elizabeth II, who, with her consort Prince Philip, Duke of Edinburgh, plans to fly from a Canadian trip to the Jamestown, Va. anniversary festival on Oct. 16, thence to Washington for a three-day official visit. Queen Elizabeth and Prince Philip visited Washington in 1951, when she was a princess and heiress apparent to the British throne.

P:Signed an order freeing members of the military Ready Reserve (including National Guardsmen) from the draft. Previously, draft-age (18 1/2 to 26) Ready Reservists were subject to call if they had not had two years of active duty under Selective Service. The order came on the advice of Selective Service Director Lewis B. Hershey, who told the President that recent small monthly draft calls have left available a large pool of non-reserve men for 1-A classification.

P: Marked his recovery by playing Burning Tree Club golf course--and scheduling a match for this week with Japan's visiting Premier Nobusuke Kishi (see box).

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