Travels & Testimonials

Among the passengers aboard the U.S. transport General Patch when it left New York harbor for Europe last week were Mr. & Mrs. Frank Carlson. They were off on a month's trip to Europe to see their daughter Eunice Marie in Bremerhaven, and to visit Sweden, Great Britain and France. It was just a vacation, apparently. Nevertheless, the eyes of some key U.S. politicians were riveted on one Carlson stopover: Paris. Republican Senator Carlson of Kansas, one of the top men in the Ike-for-President movement, is going to Paris to talk with General Dwight Eisenhower.

The Carlson voyage was part of a new stirring last week among Republicans who like Ike. In New York, the Republican Herald Tribune had a three-column editorial at the top of Page One. "At rare intervals in the life of a free people the man and the occasion meet," the editorial began. It went on to say that the paper thinks Ike is the man for President on this occasion.* In Emporia, Kans., Editor W. L. White (son of the late William Allen White) put his Gazette on the line for Eisenhower, "an essential Kansas character." In Topeka, a central Eisenhower-for-President office was opened. It is expected to become the national headquarters, to give the campaign that Midwest, home-state flavor. In Washington, the Ikemen were preparing to open an office, announce a national campaign committee and start a fund drive within two weeks.

Some of Ike's supporters urgently want him to come home for Christmas, even if he is not ready to make a statement then. A U.S. visit, they feel, would be a kind of silent signal to wavering Republican leaders that he will run. They would like to have him make a public announcement on Jan. 29 at an annual rally of. Kansas Republicans, then enter the New Hampshire Republican primary (March 11) and the Nebraska primary (April 1). Under present plans of the Ike strategists, he would stay out of the Wisconsin (April 1) and Minnesota (March 18) primaries.

* At his press conference, Harry Truman was asked to comment on the Herald Tribune's editorial. He replied that it certainly picked a fine man for its candidate.

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