Strictly Personal

For a man who sternly guards his personal privacy, Dwight Eisenhower is remarkably candid on such personal matters as health and habits, which most Americans regard as nobody's business. Last week, asked in press conference by U.P. Newshen Pat Wiggins for presidential advice on how to give up smoking, Ike grinned and confessed: "Of course, I was a very heavy smoker, probably brought about through my life in the military and war, and all that I was asked to do was to be more moderate about it. No doctor ever told me I should stop. But for me it was easier to stop [in 1949], and I will only say this: I really believe if a person turns their mind to something else and quits pitying themselves about it, they won't find it nearly as hard to quit smoking as they think it is."

Even when Hearstman Bob Clark cited a Des Moines Register & Tribune report totaling Ike's personal assets at $1,000,000, the President was unruffled. Said he: "If that man who knows so much about my business will offer me a million dollars to sell out, he is going to make a sale in a hurry." To Clark's blunt needle about a possible Eisenhower "conflict of interest problem," the President replied that although as an elected official he is not subject to U.S. conflict-of-interest laws, after the 1952 election he transferred the bulk of his assets to "an irrevocable trust, so that during the period that I am President, I do not even know what I own, so that no judgment of mine can ever be influenced by any fancied advantage I could get out of my relatively modest holdings . . . The only reports I have from private investments are at the end of the year; reports as to what I owe in taxes, and that is all."

In the busy week of the civil rights bill the President also:

P: Told White House reporters that while he was not "too enthusiastic" about the narrowly defeated House version of his school-construction bill (TIME, Aug. 5), he had expressed his willingness to sign it and had "spoken up plenty of times for the principles" involved. Moreover, he would have another school bill ready for Congress next session.*

P:Rejected the pleas of the governors of drought-hit Connecticut, Rhode Island and Massachusetts that their states be designated "disaster areas" requiring emergency federal aid, thus offered little hope to New Jersey and Maryland farmers who are also suffering a crop-searing dry spell. The New England drought situation, said the White House, is "distressing," but "considerable" relief is available under regular agricultural programs.

P: Signed into being the International Atomic Energy Agency (27 member countries), 3 1/2 years after he first proposed his "atoms-for-peace" plan before the U.N. Said the President: "The splitting of the atom may lead to the unifying of the entire divided world. We pray that it will."

P: Suggested that Congress might "review" conflict-of-interest laws affecting the recruiting of businessmen into Government; the law "reaches into such details of a man's life and business that if you want to get a younger, effective executive from out of business to do one of the jobs here, you are practically ruining his business career and his future. So it is only among a few that are not so affected that you can really ask them to make the sacrifice."

*Snapped West Virginia's Democratic Representative Cleveland M. Bailey, 71: The President "had his chance this year. When he says that the bill's defeat was not his fault, he's just a lousy liar." Replied irate White House Press Secretary Jim Hagerty: "Statements like that speak for themselves and the men who make them."

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