States of Mind

P: Chances are better than ever that Alaska may become the 49th state this year. House Speaker Sam Rayburn, long an opponent, has been won over, and will urge Virginia's Howard Smith, Rules Committee chairman, to clear the way for an Alaska statehood bill. (Southerners still suspect that any new Democratic Senators from Alaska may vote against them in civil rights.) The Republicans are for statehood, thanks partly to the popularity of Alaska's energetic young (38) Republican Governor Mike Stepovich, and the prospect that Alaskan Senators might turn out to be Republican after all. Informal polls in both House and Senate show that the Alaska statehood votes are in the majority. The balmy territory of Hawaii, once considered the hottest prospect for statehood, will probably be left out in the cold this session.

P: Ten Democrats are ready to fight for the right to take on shaky Republican Governor C. William O'Neill in Ohio's 1958 gubernatorial elections, among them former Price Stabilization Boss and onetime Toledo Mayor (1948-50) Mike Di Salle, who has slimmed down (from 215 Ibs. to 184 Ibs.) and whisked off his mustache. But Di Salle and all the other Democratic hopefuls have themselves been shaken by a persistent report that Ohio's Democratic kingfish, the unbeatable Frank Lausche, dislikes the U.S. Senate, may come home to run for governor the seventh time. Lausche so far has said nothing, but his influential wife Jane set candidates worrying when she showed up in Columbus on a shopping trip, told a friend: "I miss Columbus so much. This is really my home, not Washington."

P: The public feuding between Harry Truman's Secretary of State Dean Acheson and ex-Acheson State Department Planner George Kennan over Kennan's call for a neutral Germany (TIME, Jan. 20) reflects far more than a mere difference of political opinion. Acheson regards the strong Germany policy as his own--hammered out in the late 1940s over Kennan's opposition--and regards Kennan's attack more as a personal affront than an attack on Successor John Foster Dulles. Still silent in this Democratic debate over foreign policy fundamentals: Adlai Stevenson, who despite earlier, well-publicized intimations of thought in foreign policy, has thus far ducked all chances to make himself heard because he thinks the whole dispute is intemperate.

P: The State Department let it be known that Ambassador John Moore Allison would soon be transferred from crisis-tangled Indonesia to the U.S. embassy in Prague. Official version: the U.S. needs an able, realistic man in Communist Czechoslovakia to succeed able, realistic U.S. Ambassador U. Alexis Johnson, who has met Red China negotiators in 73 face-to-face sessions, will now move on to Thailand. Washington scuttlebutt: John Allison, 52, seasoned Far East hand and strong antiCommunist, offended Indonesia's sensitive nationalists, came under false but telling attack in Indonesia's Communist press on charges of plotting to overthrow President Sukarno. Behind-the-scenes word in Djakarta: Allison got out of step on policy with Secretary of State Dulles, urged the U.S. to listen with more sympathy to Indonesian claims to Dutch-held West New Guinea, predicted there might be a blowoff if it did not. Dulles, impressed with the need for friendship with the Dutch and the Australians (who hold the eastern half of New Guinea), elected to keep out of the whole New Guinea dispute. Allison also urged the U.S. to reply to an Indonesian request for arms by offering such harmless items as trucks and jeeps, but State again turned him down. Allison's friends complain that his position has been badly distorted in press leaks from Washington (TIME. Dec. 23), believe that he is the victim of some quiet but effective bureaucratic knifing.

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