Fencing Lesson

As Dwight Eisenhower marked his 63rd birthday this week, he was still suffering from a stiff elbow and a mild touch of flu, but generally he was in good health. At his press conference the President showed a new capability for fencing with the press. In conferences past, Eisenhower has almost always given straightforward answers to every question--even those questions he was unready to answer. Last week, the President adopted new tactics. Samples:

P: On balancing the budget: with any Administration that believes, as his does, that the soundness of the money must be assured, balancing the budget will always remain a goal. But he does not say, the President added, that the budget is going to be balanced on June or July 1, 1955. P: On the possibility of a nonaggression pact with Russia, and the report that Adlai Stevenson had brought him a personal appeal from Winston Churchill for a top-level international conference: the possibility of a pact was being studied, said the President; yes, he added, inscrutably, he had received personal greetings from an old friend.

In welcoming the American Council on Education's convention to Washington, the President made a succinct point with a personal anecdote: "I have never forgotten my shock, once, when I saw a very modern-looking village deserted in a far corner of Africa. It had been deserted because the builders put running water into all the houses. The women rebelled because there was now taken away from them their only excuse for social contact with their own kind, at the village well. I had been guilty of the very great error of putting into their minds and hearts the same aspirations that I had. And it simply wasn't so."

Last week the President also: P: Ordered the Civil Service Commission to seek new jobs for all Government careerists who have been displaced by the , Administration's sweeping reductions-in-force. P: Announced he would make a three-day good-will trip to Canada next month. P: Made final plans for his whirlwind speechmaking flight, this week, to six states and to Mexico.

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