Childe Harold to the Fray

Harold Stassen's future as presidential disarmament adviser had been behind him for weeks, but nonetheless he and President Eisenhower went warmly through the formalities of a Washington leave-taking last week. In a phone call to the President's retreat in Thomasville, Ga., Stassen told Ike that at long, long last he had decided to leave the Administration to run for governor of Pennsylvania.* Stassen followed up the call with a formal letter of resignation, received a genuinely warm reply: "In the important posts to which you have been assigned, I have been most appreciative of your sincerity of purpose, tireless energy and dedication to duty."

These were the qualities that had made President Eisenhower stick with Stassen long after he had made an enemy of nearly everyone else in the Administration with his odd maneuverings, e.g., his abortive attempt to dump Vice President Richard Nixon from the Republican ticket in 1956, and his continued sniping at State Secretary John Foster Dulles' policy on disarmament negotiations withRussia (TIME, Jan. 30). Moving to Pennsylvania, where he has maintained voting residence since his 3 1/2-year stint as president of the University of Pennsylvania, Stassen figures to be just about as welcome as he was in Washington. Said Pennsylvania's Republican Chairman George Bloom on hearing of the Childe Harold's gubernatorial intentions: "Anywhere that I haye had any contact with Republicans in Pennsylvania, I have found no sentiment for Harold Stassen."

That could hardly have worried Harold Stassen less: he was already hard at work hammering tenpenny nails into his political platform. His first plank: "There should be a summit conference--the sooner the better."

*If elected, Minnesota's ex-Governor Stassen would become the second man to be governor of two different states. The other: Sam Houston, Tennessee (1827-29), Texas (1859-61).

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