Lyndon's Other Bible

Ike devoured westerns. J.F.K. was a Bond addict. What does Lyndon read? When repeatedly pressed by a newsman during the 1964 campaign, the President unenthusiastically produced a much unthumbed copy of the speeches of William Jennings Bryan. Recently, however, with no prompting at all, Johnson has been touting the L.B.J. Selection-of-the-Century: The Rich Nations and the Poor Nations by Britain's Barbara Ward. It sells for a dollar in paperback, its 159 pages largely devoted to the problems of Kikuyus and Kazakhs. Yet, avows the President, "I read it like I do the Bible."

Messianic Materialism. He does indeed. Along with Isaiah and the Gospels, and in far less murky prose, The Rich and the Poor is a Baedeker to the Great Global Society. Based on a series of lectures for the Canadian Broadcasting Corp. in 1961, Economist Ward's book is an evangelistic yet pragmatic argument that the developed nations must generously employ their scientific and economic resources to help the world's havenots. Johnson has repeatedly echoed the same theme.

It has been a curious meeting of minds. Educated at the Sorbonne and Oxford, a world-famed author and lecturer, a leftward-leaning pillar of England's Establishment, Barbara Ward, 51, acquired at the top the same idealistic bent to which Lyndon Johnson aspired from the bottom. It can best be described as messianic materialism, a creed that renders unabashedly both to Caesar and to conscience.

In Ward's words: "The gap between the rich and the poor has become inevitably the most tragic and urgent problem of our day. The Christian God who bade His followers feed the hungry and heal the sick and took His parables from the homely round of daily work gave material things His benediction. It has not faded because material things are more abundant now." Author Ward defines poverty, ignorance and ill health as "the ancient enemies of mankind"a phrase the President has used repeatedly since he started reading the book. And, as Johnson has done in innumerable Great Society speeches, Barbara Ward insists that freedom itself is of little worth unless it is shared.

Admiration Requited. The President has been so impressed by his bedside reading that he has made the author a favored social companion and an influential if unofficial adviser. She and her husband, Sir Robert Jackson, a former U.N. official and economist who specializes in helping emerging nations develop their resources, have visited the White House five times. Before the President gave his inaugural address, he called Barbara Ward in London and read it for her approval over the phone. And in recent months she has fed the President's top personal aide, Jack Valenti, a steady stream of memos offering advice on all manner of problems.

The President's viewpoint was well defined, of course, long before he encountered Barbara Ward's blueprint for what she calls "the good society." Yet, marvels Johnson, her book "excites and inspires me" with every reading. His admiration does not go unrequited. Says Barbara Ward: "His profound and compassionate understanding of the roots of poverty gives a unique dimension to the leadership he offers the world."

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