To a King's Taste

Mohammed V, King of Morocco, was touring George Washington's Mount Vernon home when the news of President Eisenhower's illness hit the front pages. Said he, when he got the report later: "Why did you have to tell me this?" Replied an aide: "Well, your Majesty, someone had to." "Yes, I know," said the King. "I wish it were not so." Thus, on the first .day of a two-week trip in the U.S., the royal guest was confronted with the unhappy fact that his host had become ill right after bidding him welcome. When the President two days later invited the King to his bedroom for an informal visit, Mohammed spent a quiet ten minutes with Ike, told him: "We say in Morocco that one's best friend is his doctor. So will you please consider me as a doctor?"

Djellabah & Degree. Sidi Mohammed ben Youssef did not let the bad news spoil his trip. Apart from official business --including a hurried conference with his aides on the sudden flare of border battles between Moroccan irregulars and Spanish forces (see FOREIGN NEWS)--and ceremonial dinners, luncheons and receptions, the King found dramatic ways to point up his country's ties with the U.S. Stopping off at A.F.L.-C.I.O. headquarters for a sip of orange juice and a chat with President George Meany, he recalled that the A.F.L. and C.I.O. had helped to organize trade unions in Morocco. Meeting the Washington press corps, he proudly told of Morocco's press freedom. At a reception given by U.S. Chief Justice Earl Warren, he observed that his country had established a supreme court.

Smiling, attentive, the King swiftly flipped through the Washington tourist spots dressed in djellabah. He accepted an honorary doctor of laws degree from George Washington University, visited Washington's new mosque, Bashir Ahmad, flew down to colonial Williamsburg in Virginia. At the restored Governor's Palace, a guide told the King that "as elegant as the place is, there were limited washroom facilities [in colonial times]." Confessed the King wryly: "We have the same trouble."

Cads & Cows. On Friday, having sat for four days through a series of official meals (no pork, in accordance with Moslem law), King Mohammed and his party, including two sons, a brother, no wives, headed for Texas. He was met at the airport near Dallas in a funeral director's Cadillac limousine (Dallas, unaccountably, could not produce a proper car from any other source), toured a General Motors plant in nearby Arlington. He took in a fashion show at Neiman-Marcus' department store, and best of all, got a good taste of cowboy life at the famed King Ranch, where the land and the vast expanses seemed more like home than granite-blocked Washington or gleaming Dallas. There, in five-gallon hat and astride a quarter horse, he got a close look at the King Ranch's own Santa Gertrudis breed of cattle and the clanking oil-digging rigs. At week's end he flew on to California and a trip to Disneyland.

The King clearly was enjoying himself, but the key results of his visit lay back in official Washington. He had met with Secretary Dulles five times, discussed Algeria and Middle East questions, as well as the need for new agreements on U.S. bases in Morocco. John Foster Dulles assured the monarch that the U.S. was willing to cooperate fully with pro-Western Morocco, expressed a readiness to step up economic and military aid. For his part, Mohammed V had shown where his heart lies: his personal gift to the President of the U.S. was a jewel-encrusted saber inscribed with a passage from the Koran: "The triumph comes from God and the victory is at hand."

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