A Tough Time

At the first presidential press conference ever to be broadcast in full, Dwight Eisenhower, permitting direct quotations (see PRESS), last week met or parried questions ranging from atomic energy to parental failure. Where did his U.N. speech idea of pooling fissionable materials for peacetime purposes come from? a newsman asked. The President grinned and reddened self-consciously. Then he admitted, "I think that I originated the idea of a joint contribution to a central bank ..." What about sharing atomic weapons with NATO countries, as reports from Paris had been suggesting? The President implied that he would not, in peacetime, give away atomic weapons or the means or techniques of building them, but said firmly, "It is simply foolish for us to think that we cannot or must not share some kind of our information with our allies." This seemed to mean that the U.S. could help its allies prepare defenses against atomic attack and train their soldiers in atomic warfare.

The Philadelphia Inquirer's John C. O'Brien, whose newspaper has respectfully made room in its headlines for "Eisenhower," asked the President "a question involving the mechanics of newspaper production." His question: "Do you object to the use of your nickname in headlines?" Said Ike, "Well, no, of course I don't. All my life I have answered to that nickname . . . Everybody's sense of the fitness of things and of good taste is the deciding factor. So far as I am concerned, it makes not the slightest difference, not the slightest difference."

In answer to Downeaster May Craig, a grandmother, who asked what he thought about "juvenile delinquency," President Eisenhower, a grandfather, said: "That term ought to be translated into parental failure . . . [Military commanders] have been appalled frequently at the lack of understanding on the part of America's youth as to what America is, what are the conditions that could make her fight . . . When a commander finds the need to ... start from the beginning to give this boy a fundamental reason why he is in uniform, it is pretty discouraging ... It is our [i.e., parents'] responsibility to try to see that they are ... getting an understanding of America."

This week the President prepared to make a nationwide radio and TV Christmas Eve appeal for peace. Christmas Day the Eisenhowers would fly to the Eisenhower Cabin in Augusta, Ga., where he planned to work on the three messages he must deliver to Congress in January. "It will be a pretty tough time," remarked the President of the U.S.

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.