Say It in Spanish

Under a line of umbrellas held aloft by soldiers in dress blues, the President of the U.S. walked briskly along a red carpet toward the presidential plane Columbine III. Down from the aircraft stepped another President: scholarly Arturo Frondizi, first Argentine chief of state ever to visit the U.S. Ike and Secretary of State John Foster Dulles greeted the visitor with warm handshakes, and Dulles' wife Janet smilingly handed Sefiora Elena de Frondizi a bouquet of red roses. Then, in keeping with the printed "Inclement Weather Plan" of the State Department's think-of-everything protocol section, visitors and greeters hurried into National Airport's Hangar No. 10 to get on with the formalities of welcome.

It was a "brotherhood" visit, as Frondizi himself put it, so the two Presidents had little official business to transact. That night Ike gave a white-tie dinner for the visitors at the White House, met with Frondizi two days later to chat about U.S.Argentine relations. Frondizi, through an interpreter, firmly told a joint session of Congress that the U.S. should fight the threat of economic chaos in Latin America as positively as it would counter an attack "from an extracontinental power." In between engagements he calmly kept in touch with simmering trouble at home (see HEMISPHERE).

Before leaving Washington for a tour of Williamsburg, Chicago, Detroit, New York and Miami, Frondizi hosted a dinner for Ike and Mamie at the Argentine embassy on Q Street. Noticing Ike chuckling to himself, Frondizi asked what the joke was about. Ike replied that he was thinking of the toast he was going to give: he had decided to say it in Spanish, he explained, even though he is a miserable linguist. At dinner's end, the President stood up, announced that he was about to display his best Kansan Spanish. Kansaned he: "Brindo por el Presidente y la Senora de Frondizi y las buenas relaciones entre nuestros dos paises." (I drink to President and Senora Frondizi and the good relations between our two countries.) Last week the President also: P: Signed, as part of his anti-inflation campaign, an executive order 1) creating an inter-agency Committee on Government Activities Affecting Prices and Costs and 2) naming his economic adviser, Raymond Saulnier, as its chairman. P: Accepted the resignation of his assistant for federal-state relations: Arizona's ex-Governor Howard Pyle, who is leaving to head the National Safety Council. P: Held a get-together with brothers Edgar (Tacoma lawyer), Earl (general manager of an Illinois newspaper chain), and Milton (president of Johns Hopkins University) to celebrate Edgar's 70th birthday. P: Boosted the U.S. exhibition that is to be held in Moscow's Sokolniki Park next summer as "about the best investment of money this Government has made in a long time." Estimated cost to the U.S.: $3,600,000, about one dollar per expected visitor. Said Ike at a luncheon meeting with the project's advisory committee: he hoped that the exhibition would "show the people of Russia the progress the U.S. is making and its desire to live in peace."

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