Ike & the Noose

A Senate subcommittee told General Eisenhower in effect that he did not know what he was talking about. The General's explanation of why he had put the brakes on demobilization (TIME, Jan. 28) and why some 4,000,000 men are still needed in the Army had gone in one ear and out the other. The job, the Senators assured the U.S. last week, could be done with less than half that number and Ike had damn well better get them home.

Damned if he did and damned if he didn't, Eisenhower had a bad week. A photographic accident that put a noose alongside Ike Eisenhower's balding head might have been symbolic. A news photographer caught it when a group of wives cornered the Chief of Staff in the office of Congressman Andrew May. They wanted their G.I. husbands released. One of them demanded tearfully: "How do you think we feel . . . when we see pictures of our men walking with the Germans and the Japanese?"

A noose was dangling over not only the General. If Ike's judgment could be trusted--that the Senators' recommendations would force the Army to abandon some of its overseas assignments--U.S. foreign policy was also in danger of strangulation.

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