#199 - Ike Memoir

              

                  #199 Blogpost – 31 January 2024

 http://dennyhatch.blogspot.com/2024/01/199-ike-memoir_31.html

 

Posted by Denny Hatch

 

 

 

How America and the World Were

Introduced to a Dirt Poor Kansas Boy

Who Became Our 5th Greatest President.

 

 

      NOTE: My father, Alden Hatch (1898-1975), was a historian who wrote 40+ books that included the very first biography of the virtually unknown general pictured above. The book was published in 1944 when the Battle of the Bulge was raging in the Ardennes. General Ike was a roaring success —great reviews, best seller in retail stores, chosen by book clubs and received wide publicity and press coverage. 

In going through Alden’s papers we stumbled upon an intimate memoir he secretly wrote in his spare time during his later years. It is the riveting account of how my father became the world’s foremost authority on Dwight D. Eisenhower, a newly minted four star general who had been an obscure lieutenant colonel in February 1941 that virtually nobody (outside the U.S. Army and Pentagon) had ever heard of. In the next two years — thanks to his brilliant work in the War Plans Division, sunny, lightning quick mind, upbeat personality, Ike went on a dizzying ride of lightning promotions that took him from half-colonel to four-star general in just two years to become one of the most powerful commanders in world history. 

 

A Daunting Challenge for a Biographer Whose
Suddenly-famous Subject Appeared Out of Nowhere.

In 1941, Dwight David Eisenhower was one of roughly 263,000 officers in the U.S. Army — veritable ciphers with zero coverage in the national media (aside from the legends: Generals Douglas MacArthur and George C. Marshall). No Internet, no Wikipedia, no encyclopedia entries, no mentions in the press. What's more, Eisenhower's whereabouts was a closely guarded secret. Hatch had to start from scratch. 

Here is Alden’s story first hand — how he quickly unearthed Ike’s family and friends — his mother and brothers in Kansas, classmates in grade school and high school, the girls he dated, fellow cadets at West Point and officers and men who served with him between the wars and in Washington in the early WWII  years. In 1952 my father was commissioned to update General Ike to become the Republican National Committee’s official presidential campaign biography.

Enjoy!

 

 

A PERSONAL REMINISCENCE

 

By Alden Hatch

 

Late in December 1943, the White House announced that the Commander-in-Chief of the Allied Armies in Europe would be General Dwight D. Eisenhower. Having just finished Young Wilkie, I was eagerly looking for a new subject. One night at a dinner party at the River Club in New York someone, whose name I have ungratefully forgotten, suggested Ike. That was it!

If he gained a great victory, he would be the hero of America; if defeated, he would be a villain. Either way people would read about him.

On January 2, 1944, I rushed in to see my agent, Anne Watkins. She offered the idea to Harcourt-Brace, who turned it down. A telephone call to Henry Holt and Company brought a favorable reaction and an appointment for that afternoon.

"Go over to the public library and make yourself an expert on Ike," Anne Watkins said.

There was extraordinarily little about Eisenhower in the library. Although he had commanded the invasion of North Africa, the Sicilian Campaign and the landings at Salerno in Italy, there were only a few magazine articles, most of them erroneous.

Crammed with misinformation I presented myself at Holt and talked as though I had been studying Ike's career for years. The result was an immediate contract.

Straightway I telephoned Mrs. Eisenhower in Washington.

Neither I nor anyone else knew that Ike was on a super-secret trip to the United States to confer with President Roosevelt and The Combined Chiefs of Staff. With surprisingly little difficulty I reached Mrs. Eisenhower who knew no better than to agree to talk with me in San Antonio where she was going after Ike went back to England. She also suggested that I get in touch with Ike's oldest brother, Arthur, who was regarded as the head of the family.

I called him immediately in Kansas City and he also agreed to see me late in January. The truth is that the Eisenhowers were so unused to the ways of publicity that, instead of making a careful inquiry about my bona fides, they thought they had to see anybody who wanted to write about their suddenly famous general.

At that point I had an inspiration on which much of the success of the book eventually hinged. I remembered that Victor White—a well-known artist who was a close and dear friend of mine—had a brother Tim, who lived in Kansas City.

I called Victor and asked him to come over to my house. There I explained the situation and said, "I would very much like to see Arthur Eisenhower, not in the formal surroundings of an office, but in someone's home where a friendly atmosphere prevails. Will you call Tim and get him to ask the Eisenhowers to meet Ruth and me at his house for a drink?"

"Of course," Victor said. "I'll call him tonight."

"No. Call him from here. I don't want you to pay for the call."

Victor telephoned his brother. The Tim Whites were magnificent. They offered to have a little dinner party for the Eisenhowers and ourselves. Not until later did I realize how much this meant to me. Arthur Eisenhower, as Executive Vice President of the Commerce Bank of Kansas City, had a leading position in the business community. But, despite his wife's social ambitions, they had never cracked the inner circle of Kansas City society.

The Tim Whites—she had been Miss Peppard, heiress of the Peppard Seed Company—were just that. So when the Eisenhowers received an invitation to dine with the Whites for the first time, Louise Eisenhower realized her dream. My stock hit a new high before I ever got there.

Ruth and I—along with our eight-year-old son, Denny—went to Chicago on the Twentieth Century and from there to Kansas City on the Santa Fe’s Chief.

As our train pulled into Kansas City, the eastbound Chief rolled up. Off stepped Jean Harlow, looking even prettier and more sexy than in her pictures. It made us feel our luck she was running good, as Ernest Hemingway would say.

The omens did not lie. The next day we met Arthur Eisenhower in his office. He was prepared to like us, and he did. Ruth was at her most charming and her Texas accent made everyone feel easy.

 Arthur did not look the least bit like his famous brother. He was a typical mid-western banker, with a strong, hard face, iron-gray hair and eyes that could be either steely or warmly welcoming. He gave a lunch for us at the leading men's club, for which he had imported especially from Abilene the Eisenhower boys’ favorite meal, mush-‘n’-puddin.’ It consisted of a sort of scrapple made by grinding up the less edible parts of a hog (including its entrails), rendering it down in a big iron pot and pouring the resultant greasy stew over fried cornmeal mush. It was delicious, but sheer murder. After lunch Ruth and I took to our beds.

Denny was to go alone on the Katy's [Missouri-Kansas-Texas Railroad] crack train, the Bluebonnet, to visit Ruth's Uncle Harry and Aunt Mamie Friedman in Fort Worth. When the time came to take him to the station Ruth was engaged in throwing up mush-‘n’-puddin'. I was already rid of mine so I saw my little son off on his first adventurous trip alone.

When we boarded the train, I handed the porter ten dollars with careful instructions as to how to care for my precious infant. Then Denny and I sat talking uneasily as people do prior to parting. Finally Denny said, "Hadn't you better go now?"

I took his advice and got off, wondering if he would be lonely and homesick. As I walked down the platform, I peered anxiously into Denny's car to see if he had burst into tears. He was reading a book!

Denny had a fine trip. He picked up some GIs on leave and advanced his education considerably. The moment he reached Fort Worth he asked his Texas relations, "Have you read The Yellow River by I. P. Freely?"

The puritanical Friedmans telephoned us that they dared not take Denny to see his grandparents until he cleaned up his language. He never did.

The dinner at the White's was an enormous success. Tim dispensed the charm of an Irish gentleman and Mrs. White was the kind of hostess who made you feel at home the moment you stepped into her beautiful house. Before the evening was over, we all felt as though we had known each other forever. Louise Eisenhower was quite clearly in orbit; and the next day, Arthur telephoned his brothers and Mamie saying, "The Hatches are real good people. Be nice to them."

That day, in an incipient blizzard, we started for Abilene in a rented car. Weather reports were dubious, roads were icy, black clouds dropped snow flurries. Driving through the vast, flat, frozen fields I worried about the possibility of being caught in heavy snow. "They don't have blizzards this far south, do they?" Ruth said.

"Are you crazy? I answered, “This is the country where a guy starts for his barn to milk the cows and they dig his corpses out two weeks later.”

But the blizzard veered off and we reached Abilene about five-thirty. Knowing that Kansas was dry I had loaded the car with liquor.

At the hotel we ordered set-ups. Hardly had the first lovely swallow of bourbon eased our jangled nerves when the phone rang. It was Charles M. Harger (1863-1955), owner and editor-in-chief of the Abilene Reflector-Chronicle and our key man in Abilene. It was he who had first recognized the quality of young Ike Eisenhower and arranged for him to take the competitive examinations for West Point, which was the first step toward SHAEF [Supreme Headquarters, Allied Expeditionary Force]. Mr. Harger said, "Mr. Hatch, I'm downstairs. How about meeting me in the dining room for dinner?"

Stricken, I looked at my just-tasted drink. In a dry state maybe people were prohibitionists. If I offended Harger I was in big trouble; on the other hand I needed that drink.

"Why yes, Mr. Harger. But--uh--Mr. Harger--uh, we were just having a little--uh--drink. Would you by any chance care to join us?"

"I'll be right up," said Charley Harger.

Two hours later we staggered down to the dining room, very merry indeed.

In Abilene we were again transported back to that lost, never-was America. We went to the little wooden house on the wrong side of the tracks where the Eisenhower boys had grown up in hardscrabble poverty, leavened by fun, sports and religion.

Ike's mother was still living there wearing her long, full-skirted dresses and frilly white cotton mobcap. The Eisenhowers were River Brethren, a Quaker-like sect. Mrs. Ida Eisenhower's aged mind faded in and out like a worn-out radio, but she could remember every prank her boys had ever played on her and each other. At her best, her brain crackled with the spark that had taken her through college in a time when few farm women even finished high school.

We also talked with the gray-haired "boys" who had played with Ike on his high school football and baseball teams, as well as the girls he had courted by the Smoky Hill River. They all looked much older than he did. There seems to be a beneficent chemistry in success. We went to the creamery where Ike's father had been engineer of the ice-making machinery at $1,900 a year. Ike, himself, had been night fireman, studying his lessons and catching catnaps through the long nights of keeping up steam under the fifteen-foot-high boilers and checking the ornate and intricate stationary steam engine with its huge, cast iron flywheel and tall cylinder. It was still functioning as it had since 1890.

And in the railroad yards steam locomotives belched columns of white smoke into the frosty air as they had when Ike was a boy and, indeed, long before that when Abilene was the end of steel rails and cowboys drove the big-horn herds up from Texas along the Chisholm Trail. Everything was still there as it had always been, though such things are not there now—nor anywhere.

Then we drove via Fort Riley, the once-great cavalry post, to Manhattan, Kansas to call on Milton Eisenhower, who was President o£ Kansas State College of Agriculture and Applied Science. By contrast it seemed a much more sophisticated milieu. Milton and his pretty wife, Helen, were equally warm and welcoming.

From Manhattan we went back to Kansas City, and on to Fort Worth via Denison, Texas where Ike was born. We did not stop there but we could see his rambling, dilapidated birth-house from the train windows. From Fort Worth we went to San Antonio to meet Mamie.

I had told Ruth's uncle Sam Lard that we must have a suitable room in which to entertain Mrs. Eisenhower whom, I had been told, was shy about dining in public while Ike was away. He did it Texas style, getting us the Presidential Suite at the St. Anthony Hotel. I was slightly stunned by the fin de siècle magnificence of purple silk draperies, fancy Grand Rapids furniture and genuine crystal chandeliers. I wasted twenty minutes worrying about the price until I found it was only seventeen dollars a day, which even then was the cost of a double bedroom in a good New York hotel.

Much relieved I said to Ruth that this is pretty classy and we ought to give a party. “Only we don't know anybody in San Antonio."

Ruth said, "Wait until Aunt Mary gets here."

Aunt Mary breezed in about an hour later having driven 750 miles from Houston in the middle of gas rationing. (If you owned a fifty-thousand acre ranch you had plenty of gas.) Mary stumped along the corridor with her gold-headed cane to the suite. Ruth mentioned my remark.

"So you want to give a party?" Mary said and plumped down at the telephone. About twenty minutes later twenty exuberant Texans arrived. All the men but one brought bottles of Johnny Walker Black Label; the maverick brought twelve-year old bourbon!

About one o'clock we left the party still going strong in our sitting room and went to bed. When I got up the next morning, I found eight of them having breakfast with me. The party lasted for three days, moving about San Antonio to different private houses and back to our suite, with brief interruptions when we went to interview people.

First on our list was Mamie Eisenhower who was staying at Fort Sam Houston. Although the temperature was seventy-two that afternoon, Mary insisted that Ruth wear her magnificent mink coat so she would be properly dressed for such an important occasion. It was really wasted sweat because Mamie was so friendly and unpretentious that before we left Ruth told her the story of the coat. Mamie was also much prettier than her pictures, with deep blue eyes under dark lashes and exquisitely delicate skin. Her famous bangs were the subject of a brief comment. "All the newspaper people wonder why I wear them," she said. Sweeping them back to reveal an abnormally high forehead she asked, "What would you do if you were half-bald?"

We loved Mamie at first sight. She had an apartment in a building directly across a green lawn from the red brick Bachelor Officer's Quarters. It was on that very lawn she had met Ike nearly thirty years before.

After a perfectly delightful and most enlightening hour-and-a-half, we went on to have drinks with some Texas friends of Victor White named Brown—first name imperishably forgotten.

Quite a contrast. The Browns’ money was so new you could almost smell the oil, and they were correspondingly pretentious. Their brand new, block-long house was Humble Classic, redeemed by a fine mural Victor had painted in the vast dining room. Its formal garden contained a hundred and three varieties of camellias. Before we ever met the Browns a little old female relative was deputized to show us the gardens. "The war has made everything so difficult," she sighed. "Before it we had thirteen gardeners. Now we have only six, not counting the head gardener, of course."

Mrs. Brown turned out to be a fragile southern belle. Brown was a handsome, rugged Texan dressed in British tweeds by Neiman-Marcus. The temperature was still seventy degrees. Other tycoons and their wives dropped in for cocktails, which were very good and strong. The conversation was golden—black gold that is. We tried to hold our end up but we were clearly outclassed. Just at the end I had a shock. I stepped into the coat closet to get my hat and turned pale as I saw six identical mink coats hanging there—how would Ruth ever know which was hers? But she was equal to it. She found one with the initia1s M.P.L. that she hoped stood for Mary Pottishman Lard. When we got home, she said to Mary, "I hope this is yours."

"If it ain’t," Mary said gaily, "it's probably a better one if you got it at the Browns."

The following evening we adjourned the party while Mamie came to dinner escorted by Ike's West Point roommate, Colonel P. A. Hodges. This charming gentleman was in uniform but so crippled by arthritis that he could only hold a desk job at Fort Sam. The dinner was excellent. The talk was all about the Army and West Point and I tried to take notes and eat at the same time. The happy serenity was only interrupted by occasional telephone calls from our party that had been adjourned to the downstairs dining rooms. Ruth would whisper, "No, they haven't gone yet."

To our great delight Mamie stayed until ten-thirty—very late by Army custom. The moment she left—the party re-assembled in our suite and went on and on.

On our last night in San Antonio Mamie's sister, "Mike,"(Mrs. George Gordon Moore) gave a buffet supper party for us in her parent's winter home. Mr. and Mrs. Dowd had not yet arrived. It was a big, classically beautiful wooden house, far more spacious than the Dowd's official residence in Denver.

And it was the kind of party at which Mamie shone most brightly.

She never enjoyed big functions, but among old friends in an informal atmosphere she sparkled with such effervescent gaiety that everyone present caught her mood. Mike Moore was a good and thoughtful hostess but lacked her sister's brilliance. Was this the chemistry of success? Or perhaps success was due to chemistry.

We gathered up Denny in Fort Worth; thence I went alone to Washington where Mamie had opened all doors. I interviewed everyone from Under Secretary of War, John J. McCloy and Major General William J. (Wild Bill) Donovan to former soldier servants who had been with the Eisenhowers in Panama, the Philippines and at various Army posts. Then home to start writing.

That was a happy book to write. Ike's whole life had, in truth, been so simple, honest and idealistic that there were few, if any, problems of what to put in and what to leave out for fear of injuring his reputation or downgrading his prestige as Supreme Commander. This would not ordinarily be a question for an honest biographer, but in the midst of a war it would have been unpatriotic almost to the point of treason to make injurious statements about a man in Eisenhower's position. Fortunately my conscience was easy; there were no shadows in the General's past.

 Ike's idealism at this time was founded on two apparently contradictory things. First was the religious training of his parents who, belonging as they did to the Plain People, were morally opposed to war. Second was the code that had been drummed into him at West Point and which he had whole-heartedly accepted. It can be summed up in the motto of the Military Academy: Duty, Honor, Country. Eisenhower managed to hold to the best of both codes.

He lived a soldier's life, lived it to the hilt in the sense of training himself to his full capacity in that ungentle art so that he might be prepared to serve his country to the best of his ability. And yet ...

I have written about a number of military men and, in the course of my research, talked to hundreds of career soldiers.

All of them said they hated war, usually adding, "because I know an ordinary man spends his entire life preparing himself for a profession never to practice it, he is inevitably frustrated.

Even the great and gentle General Robert E. Lee watching from the heights at Fredericksburg as the Union Army deployed in all its glory on the plains beneath, said, "It is well that war is so terrible else we would grow to love it too well."

Or as Monsieur Beaucaire put it in Booth Tarkington's play of the same name, "All zat practice and not one leetle fight.”

For example, who can forget George C. Scott as General George S. Patton surveying the wreckage and death of a terrible battle and exclaiming, “Compared to war, all other forms of human endeavor shrink to insignificance. God help me, I do love it so!”

But Eisenhower was not an ordinary general. Of them all he was the only career soldier who convinced me that, in all truth, he hated war.

In practice his rare humaneness militated against his professional competence; and twice cost his country dear.

The first time was at the Falaise Pocket in the early stages of the liberation of France. Two German Panzer armies were almost trapped between the First United States Army and Patton's Third Army, hooking around their flank from the west. Eisenhower's plan was that the Third Army should meet General Bernard Montgomery's British and Canadian Armies west of Falaise to close the ring. It became evident that due to unexpected resistance and Montgomery's procrastination, the Canadians would not reach Falaise in time, whereas Patton was rolling merrily ahead. In his memoir, Crusade in Europe, Eisenhower never blamed Montgomery. As he put it to me, "We had no time to warn the British forward units of any change of plan. To allow Patton to go on and close the gap might have meant Allied Armies shooting at each other. For this reason Bradley and I decided halt Patton near Argentan according to plan.”

The result was that the German Panzer Armies slipped through the gap between the British and Americans and lived to fight again. They were the mainstay of Hitler's final ferocious thrust at the Battle of the Bulge. As Eisenhower recounted in Crusade in Europe, this cost 77,000 American casualties and came within sight of capturing the main Allied supply port of Antwerp.

The second and more disastrous result of Eisenhower's humanitarian attitude again hinged on his horror of Allied troops shooting at each other. In January 1945, as the Battle of the Bulge was ending in an Allied victory, Ike initiated conversation with the Russian General Staff to arrange a line where the American and Russian armies would meet and halt. The line of the Elbe River was chosen and Ike communicated this decision to President Roosevelt at Yalta. Roosevelt has often been blamed for the unfortunate result. Eisenhower's explanation of it to me in 1948 was, "At the time, I was 250 miles from Berlin and on the other side of the Rhine. The Russians were only about 50 miles from Berlin. How could I possibly know we might be able to get there first?” He asked me rhetorically.

True enough. But Eisenhower did not have to begin those talks with the Russians right then. He confessed to me that he had an almost pathological fear of allied armies accidentally firing upon each other. If he had taken Berlin, as Winston Churchill wished him to, history might have been far different.

However, in General Eisenhower's defense, it must be pointed out that at the Potsdam Conference in July 1945, he strenuously, even violently, objected to the agreement which placed the border of the Russian zone on a line from Lubeck southward to Eisenach and on to the Austrian border. This forced the American troops to retire 150 miles to the west from their standstill line. That nonsense was the work of Roosevelt and Truman.

During the spring of 1944, I made several trips to Washington to see Mrs. Eisenhower and meet people in high places who could contribute information about Ike. At that time Mamie had an apartment at the Wardman Park Hotel, and she would get me a room close by. Since she had a kitchen and a maid, she thoughtfully invited me to breakfast every morning. She also gave one of her delightful buffet suppers to which came a whole flood of generals, many of them wearing the big silver star of the General Staff. As good whiskey and good food warmed them, they talked pretty freely, though they did not disclose any military secrets.

One thing I learned though was the Staff's intense dislike of General Douglas MacArthur. When his name was mentioned, I heard one general ask another, "What brand of makeup is he using this year?"

On one of these trips to Washington, late in May, I began to feel quite ill, but kept on going. Then one morning I discovered irrefutable proof of the nature of my illness—I had mumps. I hastily telephoned Mamie to ask if she had ever had the disease.

"No," she said. "Not that I know of."

I was horrified. I retreated to New York, where I telephoned André de Saint Phalle, who had recently had mumps at the age of forty. "What has it done to you?" I asked.

With a smile in his voice, André said, "For your comfort I can tell you that it has not in the least interfered with my enjoyment or my potency"—a fact which his lovely wife, Jacqueline soon confirmed by giving birth to their fifth child. Though this eased my self-concern, I was terribly worried about Mamie. I waited out the 14-21 days of the incubation period in miserable anticipation of the news that she had caught the disease. Luck was with us; she did not catch it. If she had, she would have been in the worst stage on June 6, 1944, which was not only D Day for Ike's invasion of France, but also the day their son, John, was graduated from the Military Academy.

What a dog that would have made me!

I had met John Eisenhower on a trip to West Point in March to do research at the Academy. He was a tall, good-looking young man whose only ambition was to become a good soldier. Like most sons of great men, he was to be frustrated by his father's fame. No commanding general would let John anywhere near the front lines for fear he might be captured and held hostage. He hoped that when his father retired, he could have a military career of his own.

Not so. Near the end of the Korean War John was ordered to join a regiment there. His father was President-elect of the United States. When General Matthew Ridgeway, commanding our forces in Korea heard that John was coming he groaned, "Why have they done this to me?"

My book, General Ike, was published early in August 1944 just as the Allied Armies made the great breakthrough that culminated in the liberation of France. Inevitably it was a great success. The People's Book Club bought it in November for distribution the following June, provided it was brought it up to date.

Soon after the contract was signed the Battle of the Bulge began. The American lines had been broken by a massive, last-ditch, super-secret build-up of German Panzer tanks, infantry and materiel.

Rumors of utter disaster were flying around New York; Eisenhower's reputation hit an all-time low. The Book Club tried to back out of our contract. In their offices I felt as popular as a hyena at an African picnic.

The situation, though perilous, was fortunately not as bad as the rumors foretold. However, the Bulge did represent a failure, not of command, but certainly of intelligence. How the Germans could have concentrated such a vast military force in the Ardennes without Eisenhower's knowledge is only partly explained by the atrocious weather that prevented aerial reconnaissance. A first rate espionage system operating behind enemy lines could have prevented much of the grief. Despite the American public's present rather disdainful attitude toward the CIA and our military intelligence systems, the lesson of this costly omission would seem to justify their existence, in peace as well as war.

The final victory in Europe of course raised Eisenhower to a height of popularity probably never equaled by any other American General. However, it was not only victory, but also his personality that made the people love him so much. For he was more than a successful general. He was the embodiment of the ideal American—simple, friendly, brave, idealistic—a good man who seemed to have come uncorrupted by modern cynicism out of America's innocent past.

At that time Eisenhower was, indeed, surprisingly naive.

Though he had great military expertise he was almost totally ignorant of economics and politics. He had never had any money of his own and relied entirely on Mamie to manage the family finances; and his incognizance of the national economy was even more profound. As to politics: until World War II it was an article of faith among Americans that the Army should take no part in civilian government. Career soldiers could not even vote until after World War I. The Military Academy inculcated this tenet into its graduates and Cadet Eisenhower accepted it so completely that he never voted until after his retirement as Chief of Staff in 1948.

Not only that, but virtually nothing was taught at West Point about foreign policy, which was to be left to the wisdom of civilian statesmen—theirs but to do and die as ordered.

This is the reason American generals, including Ike, had little conception of the political implications of their strategic decisions. They felt that their job was to win the war as efficiently and expeditiously as possible without regard for the after consequences. That was why they could not understand Winston Churchill's farsighted effort to channel the Allied drive through Eastern Europe to prevent a Russian takeover, and his anxiety to have the Allies take Berlin. And that is why the President of the United States frequently got poor advice from his generals.

Later Eisenhower was to become much more sophisticated in such matters, for unlike many military men, he had an open mind and the capacity to keep on learning. The Eisenhower of the 1950s would not have made the same decisions as the Supreme Commander of the forties.

As to his professional ability he was a good general but not an inspired one. MacArthur was a far more brilliant strategist, as were some of the men who served under Eisenhower. In private, though not in his books, Eisenhower stated that he relied heavily on General Omar Bradley's advice on strategy and tactics. On one occasion he said to me, "I only overruled Bradley on one occasion and that was probably a mistake."

"When was that?" I asked.

"When I took the airlift of supplies away from Patton to allocate the planes to Montgomery for the parachute drop in his attack on Arnhem in September 1944."

It was more than "probably" a mistake. All three Allied airborne divisions were used, being dropped in a north-south line from Eindhoven near the Belgian border to Arnhem on the other side of the Rhine. They were, in order, the American 101^st, the 82^nd Airborne and the British 1^st Airborne. Prince Bernhard of the Netherlands, then in command of the Dutch Underground, told me many years later that unfortunately Montgomery refused the intelligence reports. As a result, the 1^st British Airborne was dropped beyond Arnhem right in the middle of a concentration of two divisions of crack German troops. In addition, Montgomery was, as usual, behind schedule in bringing up the ground forces to their support. The British 1^st Airborne was literally cut to pieces. Out of about 8,000 British paratroopers, only 2,400 fought their way back to safety.

This offensive did gain some valuable ground for the Allies and put them in a favorable position to take the great port of Antwerp. However, this much could have been accomplished with far fewer troops, less transport and fewer casualties. The Battle of Arnhem must be described a great opportunity lost and a bloody defeat.

Though Eisenhower was admittedly not as brilliant as some, he was probably the only general in either the American or British military establishments who could have united the vast conglomerate armies and successfully exercised Supreme Command in the European Theater. One shudders to think of the shambles that the brilliant but temperamental MacArthur, the dashing and equally tempestuous George S. Patton or even comparatively phlegmatic Bradley would have made of British-American Relations. It is not improbable that if feisty Field Martial Bernard Montgomery had been in Supreme Command, the British and the Americans might have ended up shooting at each other.

Eisenhower's goodwill, his modesty, his stability, his integrity and his willingness to see the other fellow's point of view, and above all, his genuine, irresistible friendliness, welded a weird and disparate collection of men from six nations into a winning team. If he was not an inspired general, he was an inspiring leader. The troops of all nations loved him.

Perhaps Ike’s greatest personal triumph was keeping the friendship of Montgomery. Both Patton and Bradley hated the little British Field Marshal, as did members of Montgomery's own service. Many an Englishman said to me at the time, “I don't see how Ike manages to get along so well with Monty. It's a miracle!”

Nor was Montgomery especially considerate of Eisenhower. More than once he said things and did things that caused Ike great distress. And he was frequently openly contemptuous of the Supreme Commander's strategic thinking. Yet many years later, when Eisenhower relinquished command of the NATO forces in France to run for President of the United States, Montgomery, making the farewell speech, burst into tears and could not finish his tribute.

When Ike returned to America for his triumphal tour in June 1945, I was already at work on my life of President Roosevelt who had died on April 13th. I carefully arranged my schedule so as to be in Washington on the day of Ike's return. As usual, I stayed at the Wardman Park and secured a room directly over the entrance Ike would use. Mamie, with the discipline of a soldier's wife, had put herself entirely in the hands of the Pentagon Committee on arrangements. However, the day before her husband’s return, she confided in me that she was upset because she had been allotted no seats in the reviewing stand on Pennsylvania Avenue. She was, of course, to meet Ike at the airport but she wanted a few seats for some of the Army wives who had stood by her through the long, lonely years.

"Why don't you call up the President or General Marshall?" I asked.

"Oh, I couldn't do that," she said. "Ike wouldn't like me to interfere with the arrangements."

That morning I was to interview Assistant Secretary of State William Phillips for the Roosevelt book. I already knew him well enough to tell him about Mamie's predicament.

"That's outrageous," Mr. Phillips said.

"I know it isn't your bailiwick," I said. "But I thought you might know somebody over at the Pentagon who could fix Mamie up. Only for God's sake don't say I told you."

"You bet I do," Phillips said. "I'll call McCloy."

When I saw Mamie that afternoon she said, "You know I needn't have worried about those seats. Secretary McCloy called up and said he was sending me eight seats right opposite the White House."

"That's great, Mamie," I said. "I thought things would work out alright."

I had no desire for a seat on Pennsylvania Avenue to see Ike whiz by, but I did want to meet him. Mamie said she would call me if there were a chance in their tight schedule.

The next morning I awoke and turned on the radio to hear that Ike was due to land in five minutes. I rushed to the windows on an off-chance, and sure enough, I saw President Truman’s DC4, “The Sacred Cow” with a fighter escort, heading for Andrews Field.

That afternoon I asked a few very special friends to cocktails to watch Ike arrive at the Wardman Park. They came running. We had a good, if brief, look at him. He seemed so young with his hair still gold, his bright sea-blue eyes and ruddy complexion.

After that we sat around drinking. I was not a good host. I was listening for that telephone too intently. Finally it rang and I leaped. It was Mamie saying, "We are just leaving for the White House dinner. Meet us in the lobby."

Abandoning my guests with a muttered apology, I rushed downstairs. An elevator door opened and there was Ike with Mamie, shyly proud, on his arm. She steered him over to me and said, "This is Alden Hatch who wrote the book about you."

The famous Eisenhower grin struck me with all its warmth. Ike shook hands and said, "Happy to know you, Mr. Hatch. You did a good job."

I muttered. "I hope so. Great honor, Sir.”

It was all over in thirty seconds, but I had met General Ike.

Our friendship with the Eisenhowers grew warmer during the late forties. When General Eisenhower succeeded General George C. Marshall as Chief of Staff he, of course, moved into Quarters One at Fort Myer just outside of Washington. In 1947, I was commissioned to write a series of articles for Liberty Magazine on each of the Presidential possibilities for 1948—Truman, Dewey, Stassen, Vandenberg, Taft, J. Strom Thurmond and Henry Wallace.  This took me to Washington right at the beginning of the Greek Crisis. Great Britain had abruptly announced that it could no longer afford to support the Greek Government in its battle against the Communist rebels who were being supplied by the U.S.S.R. with money and arms. If nothing were done to fill the vacuum, Greece would certainly fall into the Communist sphere.

A tremendous debate immediately began between those who believed that the United States must forsake its traditional peacetime policy of neutrality in Europe to save Greece, and the neo-isolationists headed by Senator Robert A. Taft.

Only two days after the news became public Ruth and I were invited to have cocktails with the Eisenhowers at Quarters One. We arrived at about six o'clock to find the Eisenhowers alone. Ike's legendary attendant, Master Sergeant John A. Moaney, brought drinks and for a few moments we chatted inconsequentially. Then I said, "General, what do you think should be done about the Greek situation?"

That was all Ike needed. He launched into a brilliant exposition of the situation in the Mediterranean that lasted for three hours. Every fifteen minutes one of the servants would bring in fresh drinks. Ruth and Mamie and I quit after the third round, but Ike kept on talking and drinking—he must have had at least eight strong Scotch and sodas. They affected neither the precision of his speech nor the lucidity of his mind.

I could only guess as to why General Eisenhower took me so completely into his confidence and why he bothered to give me such a detailed briefing on his ideas about the policy the United States should adopt vis-a-vis Russia. I think it was partly because he knew I was sympathetic to his thought and loyal to him personally; and that I was in a position to publicize his theories. Also, he may have been clarifying his own thinking before an intelligent audience. I did little but scribble furiously in my notebook and ask an occasional question.

It was then I realized that Ike had come a long way in his grasp of international politics from the days when military considerations had been his guiding principle.

When I got back home to Cedarhurst, Long Island, I temporarily shelved the articles on the candidates and began one on Eisenhower's reaction to the Greek Crisis. It was wasted effort. A few days later President Truman made his famous address to a joint session of Congress in which he outlined the Truman Doctrine of containment of Communism which has been the basic foreign policy of the United States ever since. That speech was, in effect, a rewording of Eisenhower's exposition to me. In fact many of the General's phrases found their way into it: “the bastion of the Free World in the Eastern Mediterranean without which Turkey and the Dardanelles would be outflanked”; "the necessity of checking Communism everywhere lest the whole world be lost by the gradual erosion”; “the domino effect on the shattered and wavering countries of Western Europe, such as Italy” if Greece were then allowed to fall.

Perhaps Eisenhower was simply expressing ideas he had heard in the frantic councils of state; but I do not think so. At that time he was very close to President Truman and, as Chief of Staff was the president’s principal military adviser. I believe that he was the main originator of the Truman Doctrine and that I was present at the dress rehearsal of his exposition of it to the President, with whom he conferred the day after my visit to Fort Myer.

I note that in my account of that, for me, thrilling evening, I describe Eisenhower as drinking a good deal. Yet he was never accused of over-indulgence in alcohol nor should he have been. Those Scotch and sodas seemed only to stimulate his mind.

On the other hand, ever since the campaign of 1952, there has been a widespread underground rumor that Mamie was an alcoholic. It is time to set the record straight.

The truth is that until Ike's first attack of gastroenteritis in 1950, when he tapered off drinking and gave up smoking on his doctor's orders, Ike drank a great deal more than Mamie. While he was consuming Scotch and sodas before and after dinner, she would only have consumed at most two old fashioneds before dinner.

And what old fashioneds! Sergeant Moaney, who had been with Ike since he was a Lieutenant Colonel, would fix them for her exactly as she wanted. He put in the most awful mess of garbage I have ever seen—an ounce and a half of very good bourbon drowned in grenadine, slices of orange and other fruit, a dash of Angostura bitters and heaven knows what else. The resultant mixture was a sweet, syrupy concoction that nobody, but nobody, could have drunk more than two of without getting sick.

The rumors about Mamie were started by the Democrats during the '52 campaign. The basis for them was the fact that she had a difficulty with her inner ear, which occasionally made her lose balance and stagger, particularly if she happened to be on a little height, such as a dais or the head of a flight of stairs.

I recall that James Wechsler of the New York Evening Post once attacked me on the subject of Mamie's drinking at a party at the Eustace Seligmans. "I know it's true,” he said, “because I was standing at the head of the stairs leading to the ballroom of the Mayflower Hotel when she and Ike came by. She staggered and Ike took her arm and said, “Do you think you can make it, Mamie?'"

"You see," Wechsler said triumphantly. "I have firsthand knowledge."

Of course I saw. And I explained to Wechsler how completely natural it was for Ike to solicitously ask if she could make that steep flight of stairs. And, of course, Wechsler did not believe me because he did not want to.

I will say now, what I said to him: I have been with Mamie in all sorts of circumstances, at big parties and small gatherings of intimate friends; sometimes alone, except for my wife or Ike; sometimes at celebrations or less-happy occasions; in my own house and hers and her father's house; but never, no matter how convivial the groups, have I ever seen Mamie drink more than her two hideous cocktails before dinner.

 While on the subject of rumors concerning the Eisenhowers, I must touch on the subject of Kay Summersby—Ike's British driver during World War II. The scuttlebutt had him sleeping with her all the way from Algiers to Berlin. Of this I have no firsthand knowledge. Only once did I hear her name mentioned in the Eisenhower house. That was when Ike was briefly president of Columbia University. Mamie said to Ruth, "Summersby's book came out today."

We dropped the subject like a hot potato.

The whole business was completely out of key with what I knew of Ike's character, but in wartime you can never be sure how men will act.

Both my wives have told me that I am incurably naive about such things and perhaps I am. Kay was an attractive girl, a tall, slim brunette with a nice sense of humor, plenty of courage and a crackerjack bridge player, as was Ike. Certainly Ike enjoyed her company. And the aura of his fame and the agony of his spirit at times, were quite enough to make any girl fall in love with him. In the camaraderie of long, weary hours of driving over hideous roads through horrible weather and of perils shared, they may have become more intimate. Or they may not. 

It would seem that after the war Kay was not inclined to deny the rumors whether true or not. The editor of Somersby’s memoir, Eisenhower Was My Boss, told me that she once laughingly suggested that her book be called, My Three Years Under Eisenhower.

The attitude of the Army was expressed by a General Blimp, whom I interviewed at the Pentagon on another subject. When Summersby's name was mentioned, he snorted, "That girl! She ought to have slept with him, been honored by it and kept her damned her mouth shut!"

Obviously General Blimp—I have honestly forgotten his real name—believed the rumors. However, Army officers are notorious gossips, as inclined to believe the worst as any suburban housewife. Personally I cannot deny the rumor as categorically as I can the story of Mamie's drinking, but I consider it too dubious for credence.

One of our happiest times with the Eisenhowers was I was commissioned to write a series of articles for Liberty magazine about all the candidates for president in the 1948 election — Truman, Dewey, Vandenberg, Stassen, Taft, when Mamie invited Ruth, Denny and me to visit them at Quarters One in the spring of 1947. Denny, was of course, in school and having some trouble with his studies. When I told his headmaster that I was taking my son out of school for three days to visit General and Mrs. Eisenhower, Tony Barber protested that it would set him in his studies and endanger his passing. Rather rudely I'm afraid, but I knew Tony well enough to say it with a smile, "Tony, Denny will learn more and get more inspiration in three days with General Eisenhower than in three months of school."

I was quite right. Denny had breakfasted every morning alone with Ike—it was too early for Mamie or Ruth and myself. He would be full of his talk with the General, who had the happy gift of communicating with people of any age. The upshot was that Denny scored much higher marks in his examinations than anyone expected.

One night during our stay, the Eisenhowers had to go to a formal function, so Ruth and I went to the movie theater on the post. As they were using their regular driver, Sergeant Dry, Ike assigned Sergeant Moaney to drive us. Not wanting to keep Moaney up we insisted, against his will, that he not call for us after the show. When the movie was over, we rather regretted our consideration because the whole fort looked black and empty and there was no place to telephone for a cab. However, I saw a sergeant in a jeep and asked him for a lift. When he asked where we were going, I said, "Quarters One.” That was one occasion when I literally saw a man's eyes bug out.

When we got home, we found General Walter Bedell Smith being entertained by Denny. Smith had just arrived from Russia where he was our ambassador and was to be our fellow houseguest. “Beetle” Smith had been Ike's Chief of Staff, and, perhaps, his most intimate friend in SHAEF. He was a thin, gray man who looked inadequate in his civilian clothes—a deceptive appearance, for he had a brilliant mind and a Prussian attitude toward discipline. He was a loyal and devoted friend and his staff work played a major, if little known, part in the great Allied victories.

The Eisenhowers soon returned from their party. When we told Mamie how we had, gotten home from the movies she was horrified. "You should not have done that," she said sharply. "Now it will be all over the post that we don't take proper care of our guests."

Moral: an Army post is a very small town where even the Chief of Staff's wife worries about what the neighbors think.

The following day Lord and Lady Halifax came to tea. I had followed the career of Edward Wood, 1^st Earl of Halifax and greatly admired the diplomatic dexterity and humane wisdom he had displayed in three terribly difficult posts—Viceroy of India, British Foreign Secretary in 1939 and wartime British Ambassador to the United States. Meeting him was no letdown. He seemed to me the very acme of a British aristocrat. That is a dirty word in these days, but when exemplified in a man like Halifax, a great public servant who worked hard and skillfully, not just for his class and the Empire (another dirty word) but for all the people of Britain, “aristocrat” takes on the Greek meaning of the word—one of the best.

Halifax was tall and very thin. He had beautifully modeled features and a merry eye. He had been born with an atrophied left arm and no left hand. His artificial hand was encased in a gray glove that was formed with the fingers loosely closed so there was a space between them and the thumb into which he stuck his long cigarette holder when he wanted his other hand free.

Lady Halifax is less vivid in my memory, a sweet, gray-haired English lady.

After we had chatted for a few moments an elaborate tea service was brought in, followed by trays of thin bread-and-butter sandwiches, English crumpets and little cakes.

Ike said, "Would you rather have a drink, Edward?”

"To tell the truth ... " Lord Halifax began, when Mamie interrupted him.

"No you don't. I worked all afternoon getting up the sort of tea Ike said you used to have in England. You'll take tea! Then you can have a drink..."

"Tea, of course," laughed Halifax.

We all had tea, followed by drinks with good talk throughout.

In the summer of 1947, John Eisenhower's engagement was announced to Barbara Thompson, the daughter of Colonel Percy Thompson who, like John, was with our occupation forces in Vienna. Soon afterward Mamie telephoned Ruth, who had started a dress shop in Cedarhurst, saying that Barbara was coming home alone on a transport and would Ruth take her under her wing and get her some good-looking clothes so that she would be properly equipped to meet their friends in Washington.

On the appointed day I drove to Fort Hamilton in Brooklyn to pick up Barbara. She turned out to be very pretty and sweet.

An Army brat, she was wise in the ways of the service and incredibly innocent of the world outside. As we drove along the Belt Parkway toward Cedarhurst, Barbara said, “Mr. Hatch, will you tell me what I'm getting into?"

"How do you mean?" I asked.

"Well, when the ship got to quarantine, all those reporters came aboard, taking pictures and asking questions. I thought John was just another Army officer, but I guess I was wrong."

"You sure were," I said. "Before you get through you may find you're married to the son of the President of the United States."

Barbara and John were married in Fort Monroe at Old Point Comfort, Virginia, where her father was then stationed.  We were asked to the wedding, but in a fit of misguided economy, I didn’t go. I have always regretted it.

The young Eisenhowers somehow managed to retain their engaging innocence for many years. In the winter of 1950 they came out to Cedarhurst with Ike, who was then President of Columbia University.

John and Barbara got me aside and said, "We've never been to a New York nightclub, and we thought of going to one tonight. Someone suggested the Latin Quarter. Is that good?"

I told him that it was an excellent choice. John asked, "Is it very expensive?"

I said, "Well, rather. How much did you plan to spend?"

John answered, "I've got twenty-five dollars."

I said, "Oh, dear." Then I called across the room. "General Ike, these kids want to go to a nightclub. How about giving them fifty bucks so they can do it right?"

Ike grinned and said, "Alden, why do you put the bee on me?" But he handed over the fifty dollars.

I had no compunction because Ike had just sold Crusade in Europe to Doubleday for $650,000 [$6.6 million today]. A deal had been arranged with the Bureau of Internal Revenue that since his book was supposedly a one-shot deal, the result of all his lifetime experience, the money would be regarded as capital gains. Ike was the only person who ever got away with that.

On another occasion John and I were discussing this. John said, “I don’t altogether like it.”

“Why not?”

"The responsibility of someday inheriting all that money worries me.”

Very gently I said, "John, it just ain't that much money.

In 1947, General Eisenhower had gone as far as he could go in his profession. He wanted to retire as Chief of Staff in 1948, partly as he said to me, "So Brad (General Omar Bradley) can have a crack at it.”

At the same time he was too young to lapse into desuetude. "I do not feel that I am about to stumble over my beard,” he said to me.

Where to go from there? Of course several of the great corporations had offered him a huge salary to become their CEO, but that did not comport with his idea of integrity. "I don't want to use the fame I gained serving my country for personal profit," he said to me. Nor did he want to enter politics.

At Potsdam in 1945, President Truman had told him that if he wanted to run for President in 1948, he would back him. Ike had been flabbergasted and laughed it off. He was very conscious of the fact that the American people listened when he spoke because they believed he had no selfish or partisan object. To run for office would destroy their confidence in his impartiality.

There were times when Ike talked of a cottage in the Carolinas and books to write; but he felt impelled by a sense of obligation to the men and women who had served and sacrificed under him to take a more active role and to use his utmost powers to achieve the peace for which they had fought and died. He wanted a position that would give him a platform from which he could speak and be heard. From 1946 on, he was searching for the right job.

 

PREXY EISENHOWER

The Trustees of Columbia University had been looking for a President for two years. Frank Fackenthal, the acting President, was a fine scholar and a good administrator, but the trustees felt they needed a man with national prestige to replace retired President Nicholas Murray Butler; and a more genial character to raise the huge sums necessary to keep the university going. They interviewed a number of possible candidates, none of whom seemed just right. After one of these negative interviews, six of the trustees were riding downtown in one limousine discussing the problem, when Thomas J. Watson, the austere head of International Business Machines suddenly said, "What about Ike?”

Columbia trustee Thomas Parkinson told me that every man in the car agreed it would be great… "If we can get him."

When Eisenhower received an invitation to meet with two of the Columbia Trustees, Watson and Parkinson, to discuss an important matter, he thought they were after his brother Milton for the presidency. So did Milton.

The meeting took place in the Thayer Hotel at West Point. When the trustees offered Ike the presidency he was literally astounded. He said, "You don't want me," He said, "Go to see the Eisenhower with brains!"

More seriously he continued, "The President of Columbia should be a scholar of renown; one who knows his way around

"We have many fine scholars on the campus," Watson said. "We are seeking a leader."

So it was Ike they wanted. The more Eisenhower thought about it the better he liked the idea. Though he recognized the difficulties in his lack of scholarship and training he said to me—and many others—"You know how much I want to work for the peace of the world and to influence young people. I think Columbia is a place where I can make my ideas known without engaging in partisan politics."

However, he left it up to Mamie to decide, saying, "Up to now our orders have always come from above and we had no choice. You have always gone along. This time you have to decide."

Mamie told me she did not want to go to Columbia. She realized that it would mean more of the fishbowl publicity-haunted life she hated. In addition she dreaded living in New York; the crowds, the noise, the pressures, quite literally frightened her. But she could see that Ike was enthusiastic about the job, and she believed it would be good for him. So she said, "I think you ought to take it.”

There was one other slight hitch. The President of Columbia was required to be an Episcopalian (Anglican) by the original charter of King's College. Ike was not of that persuasion. Though he was essentially religious, he was not wedded to any particular sect any more than he was to any political party. He said, “I am not about to join a church just to get a job.”

The requirement was dropped.

The announcement that General Eisenhower had accepted the presidency of Columbia caused bewilderment and anguish among New York intellectuals.

I happened to be in town that day seeing editors and lunching with journalists. Knowing I was a friend of the General, they asked me why he had been chosen and why he had accepted it. I said, "I don't know, but I'll find out.

I telephoned Walter Davenport of Collier’s magazine and asked him if he would like me to interview General Eisenhower on his new job. Davenport jumped at it. Then I called Ike at Quarters One and told him about the confusion in New York and suggested that I write about his thinking on the matter for Collier’s. He thought it was a good idea and asked me to come to Washington.

Once again, he completely opened his heart to me, giving me the basis of a splendid article. However, that did not answer the question of why Columbia had chosen him. To find that out I interviewed two of the trustees—Thomas Parkinson, President of The Equitable Life Assurance Society and Marcellus Hartley Dodge, President of Remington Arms. We met at Mr. Parkinson's spacious Director's Room. The three of us sat at the big mahogany director's table. It was hardly the sort of place I prefer for an interview, but it went off well. Parkinson was a round, jovial man whose geniality concealed a steel-trap mind and excessive caution. Marcy Dodge was small, thin and wiry and one of the finest, most courteous gentlemen I ever met. Throughout the interview Parkinson took the lead, telling me exactly what he wanted me to know, no more, no less.

Toward the end Dodge hesitantly suggested that they might like to see the article, before it was published. Parkinson vetoed that. "We don't want to assume any responsibility for what Mr. Hatch writes," he said.

The morning that I finished the article and was about to deliver it to Collier’s, Mr. Dodge called me up in Cedarhurst.

Very embarrassed he said, "Tom Parkinson didn't want me to do this, but I would like very much to see the article. There are some things about the situation at Columbia you have not been told, and you might inadvertently make things more difficult for General Eisenhower."

I told Mr. Dodge that I had promised the article to Davenport by three-thirty that afternoon, but that if we could meet for lunch or something I would show it to him.

You could fairly hear the wheels revolving in his head as he weighed the necessity of breaking some important luncheon date. Then he said, "All right. Meet me at the Empire Club in the Empire State Building. I'll get a private dining room so we can talk. But please, never tell Parkinson."

"I won't," I promised.

The Empire Club was very handsome and tycoonish, with finely paneled rooms, thick carpets, discreet servants and superb views of New York City. Mr. Dodge escorted Ruth and me to a private dining room where two liveried waiters were in constant attendance. We had drinks and an excellent lunch.

Then the waiters were shooed out, and Dodge read the article making a few notes. After that he said, "What you don't realize is that the Columbia faculty are somewhat upset by our appointing the General. Fackenthal was their man—one of them who had come up through the ranks, as it were. Also, they have the usual intellectual prejudice against the military. Fackenthal is very disappointed and so are they."

“What can I do about that?”

"You can put in some nice things about Fackenthal" Dodge said. "It may make it easier for Ike."

We worked out a couple of paragraphs, which I wrote as an insert.

Walter Davenport was delighted with the article, but he said it was too long. "What are you going to cut?" I asked.

"For one thing, that stuff about Fackenthal."

"Please don't do that," I said, and explained why.

Walter immediately agreed to cut something else. Everyone wanted to help Ike in those days—except the faculty of Columbia. Though, at Ike's request, I had been very careful to say nothing about the growing sentiment in both major political parties to nominate Eisenhower for President in 1948, Collier’s published my piece as the feature story. The portrait of Ike on the cover had a ghostly White House as background.

General Eisenhower retired as Chief of Staff in February 1948. He took two months off. Though Mamie had encouraged him to accept the Presidency of Columbia, Ike knew that she wanted to live in New York about as much as she wanted to live on Devil's Island. To make things easier for her he bought her the finest car he could obtain, a Chrysler Imperial limousine. When he told her about it Mamie said, "What a beautiful present!"

Ike looked a little embarrassed. "There is a slight hitch," he said. "I put my lifetime savings into it, but that wasn't quite enough. Can you lend me a thousand dollars, Mamie?"

A five-star general is never retired. Eisenhower still drew his full pay and was entitled to two Army aides.  

In April the Eisenhowers started for New York in the Chrysler driven by Sergeant Leonard Dry. As they maneuvered through the heavy traffic on old Route 1, Ike said, "Well, Mamie, we're driving to New York in our capital.”

This was only temporarily true. During his two month vacation Eisenhower had written Crusade in Europe. It was a stupendous feat to have produced a book of nearly six hundred pages in six weeks. True he had the help of several Doubleday editors, four secretaries to whom he dictated alternately like Napoleon—and several aides running around checking facts. Nevertheless, the editors have told me that he dictated every word of it himself and remembered the location of almost every army unit—American and German—that he mentioned. The aides and editors, checking through the huge mass of military documents, for the most part merely confirmed the General's recollections. From a writer's point of view, that was an even more remarkable tour de force than the campaigns themselves.

The Eisenhowers moved into the President's House at Columbia in April 1948. Superficially everything was great, but beneath the surface the majority of the faculty were out to get him, and eventually they did.

Almost immediately Ruth and I were invited to have dinner with the Eisenhowers. On that occasion I extended to the General an invitation from George Purves of the Wyandanch Club to go trout fishing. Ike accepted and the expedition was arranged for the second Monday in May when presumably few members would be present.

Wyandanch was a sportsmen's club at St. James, Long Island. It owned hundreds of acres of fields for shooting, and clear swift trout streams, which were kept fully stocked. I was not a member of the club. It was far too expensive—the dues were three or four thousand dollars a year. In addition, I was one of the world's worst fishermen, being too impatient and unlucky to boot. I could sit in a boat in the Gulfstream surrounded by fishing cruisers hauling in sailfish as fast as they could. Not only would I not catch a fish, but nobody in my boat would get so much as a nibble.

As we planned the expedition to Wyandanch, only club president Newbold Herrick, George Purves, the General and me would be present. But Monday, May 10^th turned out to be the first beautiful day of the season—full summer in the fresh glory of May. The General fished in the morning and caught nothing. When we went in to lunch a dozen members were present, lured out by the lovely weather. Their double-takes on being introduced to the General were great fun to watch.

After lunch George and Newbold conferred with the oldest guide about where Ike should fish. They rigged his pole and selected the fly with the greatest care. I rigged my own pole.

We all drove to the head of the number one stream—freshly stocked. Ike started out with the guide. George and Newbold followed. They knew they did not have a chance of catching anything after the General had roiled the waters; they just wanted to watch him fish.

As a boy of four I contracted tuberculosis of the bone resulting in a shriveled left leg. I have used crutches all my life. Standing forlornly on the bank I shouted, "What am I supposed to do, George? I can't walk down that stream on crutches."

Very off-hand George said, "Throw a line into that lake over there. You might catch something."

         There was nothing else to do, so I followed his advice. On my second cast, Bang! I hooked a beauty. But I was in a spot. I couldn't handle the rod, landing net and crutches all at once. Playing the fish I moved close to the edge of the lake and deliberately fell down. Then I grabbed the net and got him. Twice more in twenty minutes I went through this performance. Then I went back to the club with two big trout and a small-mouth bass. An hour later General Ike and party turned up with one tiny trout just over the legal limit. It was my one fishing triumph.

From the club I took the General back to my house, Somerleas, where Ruth and Mamie joined us. As we sat talking and drinking in that superb evening the world was at its very best.

At one point the subject of flying came up and Ike mentioned that he earned a pilot’s license. He said casually, “You know what I really love to do? Take a Piper Cub up high, take my hands and feet off the controls and see what the damned thing will do.

“My God, Mamie!” Ruth shrieked. “Did you hear that?”

Mamie shrugged.

The general looking out over the salt marshes, all green and gold between strips of deep blue water, paid Somerleas its finest compliment. “I could sit here forever," said Ike.

Eisenhower's Presidency of Columbia was subject to many interruptions. The first was political. After sixteen years of Democratic rule the Republicans desperately needed a winner.

Back in January, Senator Charles W. Tobey and Mr. Leonard V. Finder, Publisher of the Manchester Evening-Leader had entered Eisenhower’s name in the New Hampshire presidential primary. Ike was tempted. He was bone-weary, anxious for a comparatively peaceful life; and he knew the rather dismal history of generals in the White House.

On the other hand was his genuine feeling of obligation to the American people and the knowledge that as President he could exert tremendous influence on the shape of the future. Let us not rule out ambition, which every American boy of his era must have felt at one time or another to be President.

In the end he wrote a Shermanesque refusal to Finder saying, "It is my conviction that the necessary and wise subordination of the military to civil power will be best sustained … when lifelong professional soldiers, in the absence of some obvious and overriding reason, abstain from seeking high political office … Nothing in the international or domestic situation especially qualifies (me) for the most important office in the world.

"In any event, my decision to remove myself completely from the political scene is definite and positive … I could not accept the nomination even under the remote circumstance that it were tendered me."

In private Eisenhower said, "I see no reason why I should allow the Republicans to use me as a catspaw to regain the presidency."

Commenting on this, John said to me, "Of course, Father has no false modesty."

So much for the Republicans. They went off happily politicking at their National Convention, in which the leading candidates of the liberal and internationalist wing were Governor Thomas E. Dewey of New York, Senator Arthur H. Vandenberg of Michigan and former Governor Harold Stassen of Minnesota. The conservative, neo-isolationist front-runners were Senator Taft and Speaker of the House, Joseph W. Martin.

The Democrats were desperate. President Harry S. Truman was at his nadir of popularity. The party chieftains knew he could not win. In their frantic search for a candidate outstanding and popular enough to take the nomination away from a President in office they approached Eisenhower, who, true to his West Point training, had never voted or joined a political party, though all his instincts, based on his youth in Republican Kansas, and his natural conservatism made him at heart a Republican. However, to everyone's surprise, Eisenhower did not repeat the flat denial he had given the Republicans; he said nothing.

After a bitter battle at the Republican Convention late in June, Governor Dewey was nominated. He looked like a sure winner unless Ike accepted the Democratic Offer. Rumors flew.

In June Parent's Magazine asked me to write a brief biography of General Eisenhower's first grandson, David, who was three months old. I got permission to do so from the Eisenhowers who asked us to lunch on the Fourth of July so we could photograph the baby.

 

 As Ruth and I drove through 125th Street, my eye caught a bright red headline: IKE WILL ACCEPT. We stopped and bought the paper.

When we reached the Eisenhower's house we found an unexpected visitor—George Allen, who was President Truman's round, merry court jester and political fixer—and hatchet man.

It soon became evident that Allen had come on a mission from the President to plead with Ike to make another positive denial that he would accept the Democratic nomination.

Of course our newspaper was just what Allen needed to clinch his argument. We all sat in the Eisenhower’s little upstairs sitting room while Allen read it aloud, mouthing the phrases with unctuous emphasis. According to some obscure Democratic Congressman, Ike had definitely promised to run if nominated. The General got madder and madder. His face became turkey-wattle red and he snorted violently at each innuendo. "I never saw that fellow in my life," he said. "He came to my office, but never got past the receptionist."

"All the same, you've got to say something," Allen argued. "Otherwise the Convention might nominate you by acclamation.

Then what would you do?"

"I'm sure going to look like a darn fool," Ike muttered, "twice refusing a crown that wasn't offered to me even once."

Nevertheless, the following morning the newspapers carried Ike's unequivocal statement that under no circumstances would he accept the Democratic nomination.

The next time I saw Eisenhower I said to him, "You knew the way things were going that you would have to speak out. Why did you wait so long?"

Very slowly Ike said, "I waited to see if the Republicans would nominate someone acceptable."

"Do you mean that if Taft or Joe Martin had been nominated…?"

"I'd have done something," Ike snapped.

I took that to mean that if a neo-isolationist had been nominated Eisenhower might have made himself available to the Democrats. Though, as I have said, his inclinations were definitely Republican, they had not yet been fixed in the mold of partisanship to the extent that, as he phrased it, he would be willing to see "all the things I have worked for go down the drain" rather then turn Democrat.

Later that summer of 1948, I wrote an article for Harper’s magazine called "The Men Around Dewey." It was based on the fact that I, like almost everyone else in both parties, believed that Truman did not stand a chance. Without exactly saying so I wrote about the men who would hold the different cabinet positions under Dewey. In the course of it I interviewed a dozen probable appointees to the Cabinet and kitchen cabinet advisers.

I had been told to handle it very tactfully, not ever implying that they had 'already been chosen. When I talked with John Foster Dulles I followed the technique of saying, "Now, Mr. Dulles, if you should be offered Secretary of State what would be your attitude toward such and such?"

After a few such questions Mr. Dulles twinkled at me and said, "Mr. Hatch, is there any doubt in your mind that if Dewey is elected, I will be Secretary of State?"

"NO, SIR!" I replied.

All the men around Dewey seemed to me to be qualified, with one exception. When I asked, "Who is his adviser on military matters?" the answer was, "General Drum."

General Hugh Drum, the Commander of the National Guard in Governor Dewey’s state of New York. Drum was the type of soldier who, in the Atomic Age, was still fighting World War I or possibly the Battle of Waterloo. General Eisenhower, who was taking more and more interest in politics, asked me to give him my opinion of Dewey's principal advisers. I mentioned a number of them favorably and then said, "His military adviser is General Drum."

"That's a help," Ike growled.

A few days later I interviewed Roger W. Straus who was very close to Dewey. Again I brought up the question of the candidate's military adviser and Straus said it was Drum.

“Mr. Straus," I said," will you tell me why the Governor is content with a second-rater when one of the greatest generals in the world is sitting on his doorstep?"

Straus' eyes flew wide open. "Eisenhower!" he exclaimed. "Do you think Ike would consent to talk with the Governor?"

"I cannot speak for General Eisenhower," I said. "But knowing him as well as I do, I cannot imagine his refusing to give the man who will probably be our next President, the benefit of his military knowledge."

When I saw Governor Dewey, I asked him about military advice. Smiling his little pussycat smile he said, "Mr. Hatch, within the next few days you will read an announcement that, I think, will please you very much."

About a week later it was announced that General Eisenhower had gone to Pawling, New York to brief Governor Dewey on the military stance of the United States.

Meanwhile, my brief interview with the Governor had somewhat disenchanted me. In the course of it I asked a set question.

"How do you account for the extraordinary loyalty of the men around you? Dulles and Brownell who are neglecting fine law practices to serve you—[Judge Charles D.] Breitel and [Former Editor of Business Week] Elliot Bell, who could command salaries many times what New York State is paying them.”

Touching his silky mustache the Governor replied, "Perhaps it is because I treat my associates, not as lackeys, but as my friends and equals."

I went stiff with shock. All I could think was, "You condescend to treat John Foster Dulles, a far greater and nobler man, as an equal!"

I must confess I trifled with truth in the Harper's article. After considerable soul-searching I omitted Dewey's remark. I did so because, in spite of his arrogance, I then believed that Dewey, with his brilliant counselors and excellent administrative ability, would make a better President than Truman. If published it, I thought, it might kill his chances.

The American people, God bless their acuity, caught on anyhow! On October 11, 1948, the night before Eisenhower's official installation as President of Columbia, there was a white tie reception in the rotunda of the Low Memorial Library. However the brilliant the minds of the academic community may be, they don't know how to give a party. This was the usual, sort of thing with women in frumpy evening dresses and eminent scholars in ill-fitting, hired tailcoats, uneasily sipping loathsome punch and nibbling dried up sandwiches while they exchanged banalities or stared silently at one another.

The scene in General Eisenhower's private office just off the rotunda was quite different. All his brothers were there, along with forty or more of his intimate friends—generals, bankers, writers, politicians and even one or two professors were packed into that small room drinking excellent scotch and talking fast and furiously. There I learned how little hope even President Truman's closest friends had for his election. George Allen, downing his umpteenth scotch and soda, said, "I sure am going to enjoy Ike's inauguration tomorrow, for I think it’s the last one I'll be going to for a long time."

How wrong can you be?

The next day we sat among 10,000 people on rows of chairs that filled the campus square solidly to watch Eisenhower installed as President of Columbia. Dark clouds flew overhead on a swift cold wind. College presidents and distinguished academicians from all over the world trooped in two by two in the academic procession, wearing the medieval robes and rainbow hoods of the fabled universities from Oxford and Cambridge, Heidelberg, Salamanca, the Sorbonne and Rome to those from China (not yet red), India, all the Far East and South America; they had gathered to welcome the neophyte to their sacred groves.

There were the usual speeches followed by the presentation of the golden key office. Then Eisenhower made a really touching oration proclaiming his belief in the doctrine of academic freedom, and his own faith in the American free enterprise system to which he owed so much.

When he had finished, the procession reformed, now in bright-omened sunshine. First came the macebearer properly stern, then the new President trying to look equally solemn, but his gold-tasseled mortarboard was tilted just a bit like an overseas cap and the wide grin would break out. As General Eisenhower reached the bottom of the steps ten thousand people rose to their feet in spontaneous homage. Pacing slowly the macebearer passed the front-row seats where Mamie was sitting.

Suddenly Ike skipped out of line over to Mamie and whispered something that made her laugh. Then he skipped agilely back again, and the procession moved forward like a long black dragon with multicolored scales on its back.

Of course every reporter rushed up to Mamie to ask what Ike had said to her. "It was private," she replied.

Eisenhower later told me what he had said was, "Don't you ever stand up because of me, Mamie!"

Most of Eisenhower's high hopes and idealistic plans for great accomplishments at Columbia came to nothing—frustrated by the enmity of the faculty, his frequent and necessary absences, and by his own unfamiliarity with an environment to which he never had time to grow accustomed.

The few things he did accomplish were good—The Citizen's Education Project for which he procured a grant of $450,000 from the Carnegie Corporation that sent men and women specially trained at Teachers’ College to give courses in citizenship and in all phases of government to Americans; the Institute of War and Peace; the National Manpower Council and the School of International Affairs. He was proudest of all for his part in founding the American Assembly, a privately financed program of conferences in which representatives of Industry, Labor, the Professions, both political parties and the government regularly met at Arden House— the beautiful mansion in the Ramapo Hills presented to Columbia by Averell Harriman—to discuss the major problems that confront America.

Despite these very real accomplishments, Ike's Presidency of Columbia cannot be considered successful from the University's point of view. In fact, when Ike was on leave from Columbia to run for President in 1952, Marcy Dodge telephoned me and said,

"The trustees do not want Eisenhower back if he loses. If we made an announcement to that effect, do you think it would have an adverse effect on his campaign?"

I replied, "It could be disastrous. Please hold everything until the election. Then if he loses you can work something out."

Dear Marcy kept the trustees muzzled. The question never came up, of course, because Ike won.

When Eisenhower first accepted the invitation to become President of Columbia he had said to the trustees, "I shall belong to the Army as long as I am above ground. On that basis I accept the honor you wish to confer on me."

The first time the Army called him was due to the bitter struggle over unification of the Armed Services into a single department under a Secretary of Defense. The Army favored this eminently sensible arrangement, the Air Force was willing, but the Navy, fearing to lose their favored position as the senior service and other special perquisites, fought it bitterly. Even after the bill had passed Congress and the Department of Defense had been set up under Secretary James Forrestal, a most far-seeing and honorable man, admirals sabotaged it in every way they could think of. So sulfurous was the infighting that it drove overworked Secretary Forrestal literally insane. On May 22, 1949, he jumped out of a 16^th-floor window of Bethesda Naval Hospital.

Forrestal was replaced by Louis B. Johnson whose pinchpenny policy and lack of even a rudimentary knowledge of military matters left the United States almost defenseless just as the Korean War loomed. Under these conditions the three services fought even more bitterly among themselves over the inadequate appropriations granted the Defense Department.

In August or early September 1949, Eisenhower went briefly to Washington and succeeded in arranging a truce—a gentlemen's agreement as to the testimony to be given by the Chiefs of Staff before the House Military Affairs Committee on proposed changes in the Defense Department. Late in September I was dining alone, with the Eisenhowers at Columbia when Sgt. Moaney brought a telephone to the table and said, "General [Alfred M.] Gruenther wishes to speak to the General."

Ike said, "Hello, Al. What happened at the hearing?" As he listened his face grew stern. Then a red flush spread over it and his eyes popped with anger. "No!" he snorted. "I can't believe it! … Really? … Why? … Did he say that? … The son of a bitch has gone back on everything he promised … Impossible … That's completely irresponsible! … A damn lie! … What are we going to do, Al?"

At this point Ike's face was crimson. He was so enraged that he did not care what he said—normally he never swore before Mamie.

To spare him later embarrassment, I suggested to Mamie that we have coffee in the library. It was a silent session, for neither of us could think of anything to say.

In about half an hour Ike joined us still steaming. "Those sons of bitches have reneged on everything they promised," he stormed. "Things are in an awful mess. I cannot believe men can be so small, so narrow-minded … so selfish!

Then very solemnly he said, "I'd like to resign from the Army and say what I really think—for once."

That was the measure of Eisenhower's desperation. Of course he did not resign. Instead he obeyed President Truman's plea that he come to Washington and try to mediate the Battle of the Pentagon that, naturally, had become public property.

It was the most unpleasant assignment he ever undertook. The vindictive bickering and senseless fury of the opposing admirals and generals, backed by their partisans in the Congress, were incredible to a man of Eisenhower's patriotic and fair-minded nature. Controlling his outrage he somehow managed to work out a compromise between the contending forces. None of them liked it, but using his full powers of persuasion and his enormous prestige with the American people as a club, he brought them to a semblance of reason and saved the Defense Department from a chaotic collapse. Agreement was reached in the nick of time; the Korean War was only five months away. Though it is forgotten now, this was one of Eisenhower's most signal services to his country. No man but Ike could have done it.

However it took a frightful toll of him. Sixteen-hour days of meetings and negotiations were followed by sleepless nights of tossing and turning as the rage he had bottled up all day burst forth in private and sent bile boiling through his system. Mamie described those nights to me, and told how, even in snatches of sleep, he would cry out against the men who were putting their selfish partisan motives before the safety of their country.

When it was all over, in January 1950, Ike had that first· violent attack of gastro-enteritis. He was in Walter Reed Hospital for several weeks. When next I saw Ike, the change was unhappily evident. He was thinner and much of his bounce was gone. So were some of his optimism and his geniality. He no longer roared out his hearty laughter, nor could he seem to relax completely. There was always a sense of restlessness. He was more guarded even among friends. Though not yet old, he was no longer young.

He had been a chain smoker—reportedly four packs a day during the war. Now on Dr. Howard Snyder's orders he had quit the habit. I said to him, "Do you think you'll ever take up smoking again, General?"

"I don't know," said Ike, "but I know darn well that I'll never give it up again!"

 

AN ASIDE

There was a complete change in my own life in 1949. Ruth fell in love with a mutual friend and asked me to give her a divorce. At her insistence I went to Las Vegas in June. While there I had the good fortune to meet a lovely young lady who was touring the west with her mother. Allene Pomeroy (Squeaky) Gaty and I were married in September 1950. 

 

PRESIDENT EISENHOWER

During the last months of Eisenhower's tenure at Columbia the pressures on him to run for President began to build up again. The Liberal wing of the Republican Party had been discredited by Dewey's surprising defeat. Senator Taft, heading the Conservative element, was the odds-on favorite to win the nomination in 1952. The Liberals knew that their only chance was to induce Ike to run.

There was no question now as to which party Eisenhower favored. Though he still said that if either of the great parties spontaneously drafted a man it would be difficult to refuse, he privately added, "I cannot imagine running as a Democrat."

Eisenhower had deliberately learned a lot about economics. As was his way, he went to the top for his information—which to him meant the great New York bankers and industrial leaders with whom he was in constant contact. They taught him pre-Keynesian fiscal theories which he took as gospel. This made him rigidly ultra-conservative in his thinking about financial matters though he remained comparatively liberal in his attitude toward labor, education and most other things. Nor did his anxiety to promote American cooperation in world affairs change. Though his economic orthodoxy worried me, foreign policy seemed much more vital, and I reckoned that if he became President the realities of government finance would soon change his attitude about economics—which it did.

Ever since 1947, except for a few months in 1948, I had been gently needling Ike to enter politics whenever the opportunity arose, for I believed that, with his breadth of vision, his humanity, and the leverage of the trust which people had in him—not only Americans, but also people all over the world—he great would make a great President.

As early as September 1949, I brought Eisenhower a message from former Governor Morley Griswold of Nevada who said, "Tell Ike that if he will run for the Republican nomination in 1952, I guarantee to deliver to him the following states: Washington, Oregon, Montana, Wyoming, Utah, Nevada and possibly California.”

I remember a small dinner party at Columbia in the spring of 1950 at which Eisenhower's aide, Lt. Col. Craig Cannon and Major Robert Schulz were present. Seizing the opportunity, which the conversation had presented, I sounded off on Eisenhower's patriotic duty to make himself available to the Republicans—the argument that always touched him most.

We all left rather early, as we knew Ike still retained the army habit of rising with roosters. In the elevator Cannon said, "Come on back to my apartment for a drink, Alden. I want to have a serious talk with you."

When we got there, Cannon and Schulz, both utterly devoted to their general, attacked me for urging Ike to enter politics. Cannon said very earnestly, "Please layoff this President thing, Alden. Ike is so sensitive about his honor; he is completely honest and is so proud of the trust people have in him, that the ordinary political mudslinging, which is just part of the game to professional politicians, will kill him."

"I think you underrate Ike," I answered. "He's tougher than you think. Otherwise he could not have borne the strain of the great and perilous command decisions he had to make, decisions that inevitably cost the lives of thousands of young men for whom he felt a deep personal responsibility."

"That's different," Cannon said. When he chose an Army career, he accepted such things as inevitable. Though he agonized over them, he was psychologically prepared for them. He did his best; left nothing undone that could ensure victory and left the rest in the hands of God. Though things went badly in a few cases—damn few as we all know—everyone knew he had done his best and there was never a question of his complete integrity. But in politics his integrity will be constantly questioned. I dread the effect on him. You don't know him as well as we do."

Equally earnestly I said, "Craig, I agree you are more intimate with Ike than I, but perhaps for that very reason my judgment may be better than yours. I think he can take it. There is a risk, I admit, but though I love and revere him I want him to take that risk because I feel that his becoming President is so important for America and for the whole damned world."

There it was. Though we talked in circles for two hours or more, neither of us yielded. As it turned out, it did not matter much, because events soon removed Eisenhower from whatever small influence I—or Craig Cannon—had upon him.

With the formation of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization President Truman named Ike Supreme Commander of the nascent NATO forces. He was the obvious choice, the one man all the jealous, mutually suspicious partners in the alliance trusted, the one man who might be able to put it together and make it work.

  Ike answered the Presidential summons with a heavy heart, well knowing the immense difficulties of this new task. Yet had he not done it before? Many of his friends both in the Armed Services and civilian life begged him not to take the post. They said that attempting to build a conglomerate military force made up of bits and pieces from so many nations with different arms, different habits and opposite national objectives, without the cohesive pressure of actual war, was a hopeless task that might dim his bright fame. They said he was a fool to try. There was another reason that nobody mentioned because it would have only made him more adamant.

Little as Mamie had liked Columbia, she dreaded this move even more. But she did not hesitate either. As soon as word came from Washington she began packing. There was an immense amount to be done. All the Eisenhowers’ personal possessions had to be separated from the Columbia furnishings and either sent to storage or to Europe.

One day I asked her, "Why go to all this trouble? You could leave the stuff here. The General is only on leave from Columbia; and you'll be coming back when this assignment is over."

In a completely matter of fact tone Mamie mentioned the thing everyone had avoided. "Sure we'll come back if we can," she said, "but even in Western Europe there are about twenty million Communists and every one of them will be out to get Ike. You just can't be sure."

Ike was perfectly aware of all these things but he never had a moment's hesitation about accepting the Supreme Command. It was a thing he had to do.

General Eisenhower's success in NATO is a matter of history to which I can add no new information. Nor had I anything to do with his eventual decision to run for the Republican nomination for President in 1952. I was only an onlooker during his campaign for the nomination and watched the neck-and-neck finish between him and Taft on television. But the moment Ike was nominated I decided to get into the campaign, perhaps write a piece about the Men Around Eisenhower as I had for Dewey—not that it had done him much good.

After their convention the Republicans rested while the Democrats nominated Governor Adlai Stevenson of Illinois—the best man they could have picked.

When the Democratic Convention ended, I telephoned James C. Hagerty, Eisenhower's press secretary, and told him that I would like to come to Denver and do some writing that might help Ike. Jim Hagerty said, "Come on. We’ll fix you up."

Squeaky and I arrived at the Brown Palace Hotel in Denver late one evening in July. The hotel looked like an enormous wedge of chocolate cake standing on a triangular lot in the middle of the city. It was built around a central well ten stories high with balconies running around it on every floor. Republican headquarters were a gopher's warren of rooms on the mezzanine and second floor. The Eisenhowers had the Presidential suite on the top floor, though when they slept at all it was usually in the Douds’ house on Lafayette Street where Mamie had grown up.

I went to the desk to register but no room had been reserved for us. Desperately I called Jim Hagerty who said, "There's been a little difficulty. Come on up and see me."

Even that early in the campaign Jim looked haggard. He greeted us—we were old friends—and explained that the governor of some state had arrived unexpectedly and he had to give him our room. "I've got you in a hotel down the street," Jim said. "I hope you don't mind."

"Of course not. Governors come first."

Then Jim wearily wiped his brow and said, "I've never been in a campaign like this one. Usually the candidate doesn't get downstairs until about ten o'clock. Yesterday morning I got to my office bright and early at eight-thirty and everybody said 'Where have you been? The General's been asking for you since seven-thirty.’"

Next to handing Ike ninety-two of New York's ninety-six votes at the convention, Governor Dewey's greatest gift to the candidate was Jim Hagerty. Jim was a great old newspaperman who had been Dewey's press secretary for many years. There was nothing he did not know about politics and handling the press, with whom he was very popular. 

 

 

 

 

Ike's campaign for the nomination had been a disaster presided over by incompetent amateurs until Dewey and Nassau County Executive Russell Sprague had taken things in hand and sent Hagerty to him about three weeks before the convention. I am positive that without Dewey's efficiency, Sprague's influence and Hagerty's expertise, Ike could never have beaten Senator Taft's beautifully organized, professionally manned machine, even though Ike was far more popular.

Squeaky and I went to the fleabag where Hagerty had stashed us. We are both night birds to whom the dawn is something that happens while we sleep, but we saw we would have to alter our habits in Denver. We did this by keeping one of our watches on Eastern Daylight Time. Thus, when we had to, get up at seven we could fool ourselves into feeling that it was really ten.

Jim Hagerty was right; that was the strangest campaign ever. The first day we that were there Republican Headquarters was in a state of chaotic confusion. Usually a presidential candidate comes to the campaign from a political base such as senator or governor. He has an organization in being which forms the nucleus of his campaign machinery. Ike had nothing of the sort.

Even his pre-convention organization was a jerry-built affair manned by dedicated neophytes. The exception was, of course, the staff work Dewey had provided. But except for Hagerty, even this disappeared after the convention.

In addition the Taft people had to be fitted in and given jobs commensurate with their dignity. That first day no one knew anything, including Ike. From his luxurious suite upstairs he presided over the chaos below rather like a constitutional monarch who has just acceded to the throne and is not yet sure of his proper function. All Ike did was to ratify decisions made by other people, and to arbitrate differences of opinion, producing harmony through compromises between zealous and opinionated subordinates, a thing he could do supremely well. But he did not and could not have been expected to contribute a great deal in the way of organizing the campaign.

But if headquarters was short on political machinery, it was high on morale. Ike had called the campaign a crusade and that was truly the spirit of it. Everyone believed that they were engaged in a great and significant endeavor to give America a new direction and a high purpose through the election of General Eisenhower. People who pompously call politics a dirty business should have been there to see a large group of Americans working selflessly and tirelessly eighteen hours a day for an idealistic purpose. It matters not at all whether the endeavor was in the end worth all the sweat and sacrifice. The point is they were driving themselves to the point of collapse for something they believed in.

The Taft people, who had fought so bitterly against Ike in the convention, were caught up in it and were just as dedicated as the original Ikeites. Even the paid secretaries were working sixteen hours a day—eight for money and eight for Ike.

With that kind of effort the thing had to work. It was thrilling to watch the machinery evolve and cohere. As we rambled through that gopher colony day after day it happened before our eyes. One day you would find a bit of organization beginning to function in one set of rooms—one area—and another quite separately working somewhere else. A day or so later the two would have meshed and be working smoothly together. On the third day other parts of this fledgling political machine would appear and be joined to the larger mass.

Of course, there were at least ten crises a day to be met and overcome. Any political campaign is a series of desperate crises. That is part of the fun and thrills that, together with the underlying serious purpose and the tremendous stakes of a chance to make history and, perhaps, form the world nearer to the heart's desire, make politics the greatest game of all. But I must admit there were more crises in Ike's campaign then most.

However, though it may sound wildly helter-skelter, there were by now some real old pros at work. Besides Jim Hagerty, two of the best were original Ikeites, Arthur Vandenberg, Jr., son of the late great senator from Michigan, who had served his apprenticeship on his father's staff, and Governor Sherman Adams, the little, gray Yankee trader from New Hampshire. Though Adams was later forced to resign because of some nonsense about vicuña jackets and hotel bills paid for by a somewhat unsavory business friend, I consider him an honest man. Not for a moment do I believe that these minor gifts ever influenced him to make a decision contrary to the best interests of his country, his state or his party. Nor was it cupidity on his part; for he was too well off to need such cumshaw; rather it was just the custom of his era to accept such things as tokens of old friendship and the normal perquisites of power. This is merely an opinion, based on knowing the man. But I can definitely state that Sherman Adams by his canniness in politics, his cool, unflappable handling of crises and his shrewd assessment of people and what they had to offer, together with his remarkable administrative ability, was enormously helpful in getting Eisenhower elected.

The Taft people from the mid-western states were the greatest technicians at the Brown Palace. Had Dewey paid them due heed, he would have been elected President of the United States in 1941. But he succeeded in alienating them, less by his ideology than by his arrogant manner and his neglect of them, based on his certainty that since he was the Republican candidate, they had nowhere else to go and could be taken for granted. Many of these gentlemen in recounting their political experiences to me said, "I have ridden every Republican Campaign train since 1920 (or 1916 or 1928) except one."

That one was always Dewey's second train.

Nor were the gifted amateurs to be overlooked. Once the old pros got things in hand, these freelancers played a vital role in voicing the idealistic aspects of the campaign. Among them were Kevin McCann, an old friend of Eisenhower's who was President of Defiance College; Stanley High, on leave from the Reader's Digest to write speeches for the candidate; Tom Stevens, who became Ike's appointment secretary; Mary Lord, who considered herself a pro, but really belonged in the amateur category; Walter Williams and entrepreneur-investor and Stanley Rumbough, who was married to Dina Merrill. All were sparkplugs of the non-partisan, youth-oriented citizens for Eisenhower.

Others included Manufacturer’s Trust chairman Gabriel Hauge, whose outsized head housed a massive brain; he was a Master of Economics and badly needed. I place Senator Henry Cabot Lodge of Massachusetts among the gifted amateurs because Lodge was a sort of American Earl of Rosebery, capable of functioning brilliantly in many spheres of public service from politics to diplomacy to war and so financially and socially secure that he did not have to worry. Lodge never acquired the professional's total immersion in politics. With his tall elegance, his blue-eyed, curly-haired good looks, and his mesmerizing charm, he was a great help to Ike, and devoted himself so completely to the presidential campaign that he neglected to keep his home fires burning, losing his seat in the Senate to John F. Kennedy.

Another character in the amateur category was Joe Alex Morris, formerly of Collier’s, who had the unlikely and infinitely complex job of arranging transportation for everybody from anywhere to everywhere. Arthur E. Summerfield, who became Postmaster General, must be put down as a pro. He had devoted a good deal of time to politics and was national committeeman from Michigan, but he had never held an elective office. Stout, strong and cool, he was a good balance wheel as head of the Republican National Committee.

There were many more eminent men and women who, at great sacrifice to themselves devoted all their time and energy to electing Ike.

The press corps, while supposed to impartially record facts, was in the main, very friendly and helpful to the general. With the best will in the world it is almost impossible to write completely objectively about men with dynamic personalities who represent definite political ideas. If you like them and believe in them, that colors your reporting and vice versa. Many of the great newspapermen covering Ike's campaign were completely beguiled by him. This was hardly an unfair advantage as even more journalists took the part of Adlai Stevenson, who, because of his liberal views, quick wit and high intelligence quotient, was the darling of the intellectuals.

One of Eisenhower's most effective friends in the press was Beverly Smith, head of the Washington Bureau of the powerful Saturday Evening Post. Bev made no pretense of objectivity. He was given an office of his own in the Eisenhower Headquarters. It was a triangular room in the prow of the flatiron-shaped Brown Palace with dark gothic paneling. From it he campaigned and wrote on Ike's behalf in a most effective manner.

An example of Bev's method came when I told him that Defiance College president Kevin McCann had refused to let me interview him.

"He's just shy," Smith said. He called McCann and invited him up to his office. Though it was only eleven o'clock in the morning, he insisted that McCann try his special drink—a combination of bourbon and maple syrup served in a glass as big as a compote. Before McCann was half through it, he was chattering like a chipmunk, quoting in ringing tones General Anthony Wayne's famous challenge at Point Defiance: "From here I can defy the British, the Indians and all the devils in hell!" This was followed by a splendid uninhibited interview.

On that same morning the medical missionary-to-China-turned Congressman, Walter Judd, dropped Bev's office. His seamed and pitted face and slightly tilted eyes gave him a gnomish look, while his mind struck sparks. When the conversation turned to foreign policy I remarked, "Though I hate to say it in this company, I think Dean Acheson is a damn good Secretary of State.

To my amazement all those Republicans agreed with me—strictly not for publication.

Besides being the strongest Ikeite of all the newspaper people there, Bev Smith was the gentlest gentleman in the press corps.

But many other wise and acute journalists were at the Brown Palace.

The press had a two-room suite on the mezzanine. One room was supplied with an enormously long table on which stood twenty or more typewriters and batteries of telephones ready for action. The other was furnished like a drawing room with a small bar in one corner. There we spent the pleasantest hour of the day. At six o'clock all the flurry and pressure suddenly ceased as the politicians, many of whom kept farmer's hours, stopped work for dinner.

In the blessed interval while they ate, we drank and talked. And talked! One by one the big by-liners strolled in, ordered a drink, sank into an easy chair and let down their hair. Nothing said in that room was quotable, so, in a phrase not yet invented, they told it like it was. Bill Lawrence of The New York Times was there along with the top men of the three wire services, and people from Reuters and the great English newspapers who always seemed a little bemused by the moirés of American politics (and were kindly set right by men who really knew the score). Of course Jim Hagerty was very much present setting up drinks and then telling tales out of school he would not have dared to anywhere else.

Right in the middle of our stay in Denver Eisenhower went off to make a speech in Los Angeles, which was written up as a great success, but according to reports in the pressrooms was a great flop. The advance work was sloppy, arrangements fouled up, resulting in a half-filled stadium. In addition, the well-known truth is that Ike was not much of an orator. With his habit of numbering his points One, Two, Three, Four, he always sounded like a general briefing his staff on a proposed operation. He improved, of course with practice, but what really got across and won the people was his completely transparent sincerity. If he did not say it well, everyone knew that he meant what he said, which was a great relief for a change.

Despite all the enthusiasm in Denver, I often wondered how Ike would ever win; but he seemed to have no doubts. When we went up to talk with him, the Olympian calm of the top floor was a soothing contrast to the chaos on the mezzanine.

Mamie, too, was quite her old self, chattering about her grandchildren—there were three of them now—and paying no apparent heed to politics. When she entertained the big name politicos, either in the long, flower-filled drawing room of the Presidential suite or, preferably sitting informally on the steps of the Doud house on Lafayette street, she continued to talk about the grandchildren, without realizing that this was very good politics indeed. Mamie's approach to the campaign was typically simplistic. Her solution for all the ills of the world was to elect Ike President, and she felt certain the American people would agree.

My own doubts were based partly on the confusion below stairs and partly on the nature of Eisenhower's cohorts. Stanley High mentioned that aspect of the campaign. Squeaky, who was drawing caricatures of the people I interviewed, said to him, "It's awfully hard to make distinctive pictures of the people around Ike. They all seem to have snub noses and blue eyes."

"You've put your finger on one of our major problems," High said. "This is an All-American, white, Anglo-Saxon, Protestant outfit. There are only a couple of Jews and one Negro girl secretary. She gets photographed so much she hasn't time to do any work.

"Why we hardly even have any Catholics,” High went on. “Tom and Jim Hagerty have good Irish names, but damned if they aren’t North of Ireland Protestants. We've got to do something about it."

Things were done about it later, but not to any great extent.

When Squeaky and I got back to Cedarhurst I made myself available to the different Republican committees as a speaker. Eisenhower was using my up-dated General Ike as the campaign biography, so I came in handy. The format was for me to precede the main speaker with a twenty-minute talk about Ike's boyhood and youth, interlaced with the best anecdotes. Then the big shot, whoever he was, would follow with a political speech.

Once I had an hour-and-a-half debate over the air with Croswell Bowen of the New Yorker, an avid supporter of Adlai Stevenson. We sat at a long table with our host/commentator, radio news analyst George Hamilton Combs, at its head. Cros Bowen had spent days in the New York Public Library preparing himself. His accumulated data covered his entire side of the table. All I had was a few notes written on filing cards. His impressive array of cards frightened me a little. But not to worry. Each time a subject came up Cros would dive into his research while I chattered on. When I saw he had found what he was looking for I would quickly change the subject. It was mean of me—but effective.

My strategy was not to attack Stevenson—who, I thought, was a fine man, but to keep talking about Eisenhower. Bowen kept attacking Ike. That suited me well. No matter what was said, I just kept Eisenhower's name going out over those airwaves to millions of people—Eisenhower! Eisenhower! Eisenhower!

After it was over Bowen said to me, "I'm surprised you didn't attack me about Stevenson's death wish. I was prepared for that."

"What death wish for Pete's sake?"

"You know," Bowen said. "For instance, when Adlai was first asked about running for President he said, ‘I'd rather be shot'. That's a clear psychological indication of a death wish."

"Not to me," I answered. It's just an expression. I use it all the time."

That I think is an excellent example of the over intellectualization of Stevenson's campaign. Most Americans don't think any more about death wishes than I do.

My other big moment, not really very big, was when John Foster Dulles asked me to be his stooge in his television debate with Averell Harriman on foreign policy. The format was to have a moderator, Cecil Brown—a associate of Edward R. Murrow at CBS—with a panel consisting of the foreign editors of Time and Newsweek. In addition, two other panelists appointed by each of the principals to ask the questions rehearsed questions. The debate was carried by The Daily News TV station WPIX, so we all met in Walter Annenberg's office. We arrived more or less in reverse pecking order—stooges first, then the foreign editors, followed by Mrs. Harriman. John Foster Dulles drifted in quietly and was introduced all around, shaking hands with everyone. Then he and I withdrew to a corner to discuss strategy.

The last to arrive was Averell Harriman. Make no mistake, I consider Mr. Harriman a dedicated man who has served his country well and far beyond—at least fifteen years beyond—the call of duty. But he was not at his best that night. Precariously close to airtime—about seven minutes—there was a tramp of feet in the hallway. The door flew open and Harriman marched in surrounded by a group of yes men or bodyguards, like a gangster visiting a fellow capo. He acknowledged introductions with an unsmiling jerk of his head. Whereupon principals, panelists and stooges hurried into the studio.

To my thinking, Dulles won the debate without question, and without much help from me—I only had time for two questions. His easy manner and complete command of every phase of foreign affairs contrasted with his opponent's stiff, slightly condescending style and phony smile, which Harriman only flashed when the camera swung on him. When it was over, we all ran for an elevator.

For that was the night of Richard M. Nixon's exculpatory speech, scheduled immediately after our broadcast, and Mr. Annenberg had held an elevator to take us back to his office to hear it.

Of all the crises of Ike's crisis-plagued campaign the Nixon one was the worst. The Democrats had suddenly publicized the fact that a group of businessmen had financed Nixon's political expenses to the extent of about $18,000. I could not see that it was so bad, for I knew that all the time he was President of Princeton and Governor of New Jersey right up to the moment he was elected President of the United States, Woodrow Wilson had received a gift of $25,000 a year from a group of millionaires who believed in his ideals. No one had questioned Wilson's integrity and it seemed hardly fitting for the Democrats to make a row about Nixon. However, the news created a public outcry that almost forced Nixon to resign.

If one had to listen to that speech, and one did, Mr. Annenberg's big office was the place. It was filled with comfortable sofas and easy chairs, and there was a bar manned by two waiters who kept our glasses filled.

Admittedly, Mr. Nixon made a rather lachrymose speech, though it served its purpose. Considering that half the people in the room were Republicans I thought Harriman's behavior rather rude.

Each time Nixon shed a tear of self-pity Harriman snorted loudly, and when Nixon made that pathetic gambit about his dog, Freckles,

Harriman grumped, "Corn! Pure corn!"

So it was, but I thought some riposte was due from our side so I said, "He learned it from Franklin Roosevelt and Fala, didn't he?"

I was referring to Roosevelt’s aside that brought huge guffaws from his audience at his 1944 after-dinner speech to the International Brotherhood of Teamsters, Chauffeurs, Warehousemen and Helpers of America:

 

These Republican leaders have not been content with attacks on me, or my wife, or on my sons. No, not content with that, they now include my little dog, Fala. Well, of course, I don't resent attacks, and my family doesn't resent attacks, but Fala does resent them. You know, Fala is Scotch, and being a Scottie, as soon as he learned that the Republican fiction writers in Congress and out had concocted a story that I had left him behind on the Aleutian Islands and had sent a destroyer back to find him - at a cost to the taxpayers of two or three, or eight or twenty million dollars. Fala’s Scotch soul was furious. He has not been the same dog since. I am accustomed to hearing malicious falsehoods about myself - such as that old, worm-eaten chestnut that I have represented myself as indispensable. But I think I have a right to resent—to object to—libelous statements about my dog

 

I don't think Mr. Harriman ever liked me after that; but I stubbornly continue to admire his devotion to the service of his country.

Election night was a time of triumph. We needed no computers to forecast the trend. I walked into a private election night party at eight o'clock and immediately asked why the television was not on.

"It's too early to hear anything," my host said. "The polls haven't even closed in New York.”

"Too early!” I brayed. “Why Ike's already elected."

Then told him that the polls had closed at seven o'clock in Connecticut, and by 7:45 the radio said that Eisenhower had carried Bridgeport.

"If he carried labor-dominated, socialist, Bridgeport, it's in the bag," I said. We went on from there.

Another time of triumph was Ike's inaugural. Never before or since have I beheld such a scene of pure, high-hearted gaiety. Washington was like a country fair that day. Everyone wore a smile, and the delays caused by the great, jostling crowds were accepted in a spirit of good-natured courtesy. There was little or no crowing over the vanquished. Rather it was a genuine consensus that after the long bitter years of war and uncertain peace, America was once more on the road to the Arcadia of all our dreams. Even the Democrats looked happy.

Ike began his inaugural address with the beautiful little prayer that he had written that morning on a piece of hotel stationery.

 

My friends, before I begin the expression of those thoughts that I deem appropriate to this moment, would you permit me the privilege of uttering a little private prayer of my own. And I ask that you bow your heads: 

 

Almighty God, as we stand here at this moment my future associates in the Executive branch of Government join me in beseeching that Thou will make full and complete our dedication to the service of the people in this throng, and their fellow citizens everywhere. 

Give us, we pray, the power to discern clearly right from wrong, and allow all our words and actions to be governed thereby, and by the laws of this land. Especially we pray that our concern shall be for all the people regardless of station, race or calling. 

May cooperation be permitted and be the mutual aim of those who, under the concepts of our Constitution, hold to differing political faiths; so that all may work for the good of our beloved country and Thy glory. Amen.

 

Nothing could have expressed more perfectly the mood of that enchanted hour. That it all turned out to be an illusion detracted nothing from our genuine exaltation.

From Washington Squeaky and I drove on to Florida for a much needed vacation. While we were there Bill Buckley, the head of Henry Holt and Company (no relation to Bill Buckley the smart aleck columnist) telephoned me. "We want a book about Mamie," he said.

"You're out of your cotton-picking mind," I told him. "Mamie's never done anything but be a good wife to the General. What can I write about that?"

“You can fake it," Bill said. "We think it would sell and we want it. Stop at the White House on your way north and see if Mamie will cooperate.”

Theirs but to do and not die of hunger. I arranged an appointment with Mamie and we tore northward, only to find when we reached Washington that she and Ike had unexpectedly left town for a brief vacation.

It took me some time to arrange another appointment—the White House protocol had already closed in. However I finally got one for eleven o'clock on a certain morning in April. Mamie received Squeaky, Denny and me sitting up in bed in the big southwest bed- room where Abraham Lincoln had slept. (Not the fabled Lincoln room where the Emancipation Proclamation was signed.) It had been done over for Mamie in her favorite colors—pink and green. She was wearing a furbelowed, pink bed jacket with a blue ribbon in her hair that reflected the color of her eyes. She looked very pretty.

We chatted of old times and her new situation. It was evident that Mamie did not like being First Lady but was going to set her teeth and go through with it. At one point she' said, "What's it like outside? I'm going out to lunch and I never can tell what to wear in this air-conditioned tomb."

I had broached the subject of the book without anything more than a vague discussion. As we were leaving, I said, "Mamie, I've got to know. Will you cooperate with me on the book about you?"

Mamie said, "Sure, sure."

Because Denny was with us, she told her secretary, Mary Jane McCaffree, to give us the private tour of the White House. We started on the second floor poking into all the bedrooms and the bathrooms, each of which had the seal of some state except Ike's, which had the Presidential seal. Mrs. McCaffree was fascinated; she kept saying, "Let's see which state this one belongs to." She explained, "I haven't had time to see this house myself. I don't know much about it."

That was the truth; though I had never been all through the White House before, I knew more about it then than she did.

When we got to the main floor, we picked up a young usher; he was just learning the spiel but was helpful. In the East Room, he pointed out the white and gold piano and said, "President Truman used to have two pianos here. I don't know what happened to the other one."

In the basement, he opened a door saying, "This is the library." But no one could have reached the bookshelves. The entire room was filled by Harry Truman's huge black piano. Some years later it was finally shipped to Independence, Missouri.

That afternoon we went to tea with our old friend Alice Roosevelt Longworth, daughter of President Theodore Roosevelt. After greeting us she asked, "How are things down at the White House?"

"They seemed a bit confused," I answered.

"Poor dears," said Mrs. Longworth. "They don't know what's hit them yet."

Once more we traveled to Denver. This time we had a fine room on an upper floor of the Park Lane Hotel, from which we had a superb view of the entire frontal range of the Rockies from Pike's Peak, fifty miles or more to the south and to its northern mountains. It rose abruptly from the sloping plain like a jagged, white-capped breaker, petrified as it crested.

At nine o'clock the next morning Governor Dan Thornton's secretary telephoned to say he was unexpectedly called out of town but could see us if we came to his office immediately. We made it by ten o'clock from a zero start. The Governor of Colorado was an extremely handsome, delightfully genial westerner with just a touch of eastern polish. He had been one of Ike's staunchest backers in the convention and was devoted to him and Mamie.

As I sat down, I explained that we had a date with Mrs. Doud at eleven o'clock. The governor said he would see to it that we made it. Then he gave us a brisk interview with many amusing anecdotes about the campaign. But all the time he kept his eye on the clock. "You mustn't be late for Mrs. Doud," he said.

"She's not busy," I answered. "A few minutes wouldn't matter."

"Yes, it would," he said. It was plain that Mrs. D. had him buffaloed.

The governor finished his final story at 10:55. "Now run," he said. "I'll have a car waiting to take you to the Douds."

So we arrived at Lafayette Street in, gubernatorial splendor. Mrs. Doud was waiting for us at the top of the short flight of concrete steps that led up from the sidewalk to the terrace on which the house was perched. As I shook hands, she pointed at the departing limousine and asked," How did you rate that, Alden?"

"We've just been interviewing Governor Thornton," I answered.

"Humph," said Mrs. Doud. "What does he know about us? He's a Johnny-come-lately."

It seemed to me a rather cavalier way to refer to a man who had played a vital part in her son-in-law's election; but then Mrs. Doud was not noted for her tact. In fact she and a small coterie of friends considered themselves the only socially acceptable people in Denver.         

Long, long ago when Mamie had become engaged to Second Lieutenant Dwight D. Eisenhower, they had all been horrified at Mamie "throwing herself away" on a young man with "such a queer name"—and an army officer, at that! Only the Douds, who had come to love Ike, as everyone did who knew him well, had stood up for him. However, they had not convinced their friends. At the wedding, as Mamie and Ike drove off in the Douds’ Packard Twin-six, one dowager said sadly, "There goes Mamie, and she could have married anybody in Denver!"

The Douds were originally from Cedar Rapids, Iowa. John Doud had made his pile in meatpacking and retired at the early age of thirty-six. They had come to Denver in 1906 and bought the house at 150 Lafayette Street where Mrs. Doud still lived.

Solid and substantial are the adjectives for it—certainly not beautiful. Add comfortable and there it was—dark wainscoting and heavy oak furniture in the hall, a front parlor with a little tiled fireplace around which were grouped mahogany and rosewood chairs, each with its small, petit-point footstool; family photographs and miniatures crowded the mantel and little tables were in cabinets and on shelves; there were lace curtains at all the windows. There was also a dining room with a round mahogany table and a buffet, bearing the massive Doud silver, and cabinets full of sparkling cut glass. Downstairs in the basement was what Mrs. Doud called "The Wreck Room." Its central feature was a ponderous pool table—all four of the Doud girls played good pool as did Mr. Doud, who was affectionately known to the family as Pooh-Bah, because he ran everything like the character in Gilbert and Sullivan’s The Mikado. The Wreck Room also had a fireplace, a green baize poker table, the little upright piano with which the Douds had started housekeeping, and an early wax-cylinder phonograph with a flower-shaped horn.

When I saw the house, it was exactly the same as it had been when Mamie and her three sisters were little girls. Once the furniture was placed Mr. Doud would not allow a single piece to be moved. "When I come home some dark night," he said, "I want to know exactly where everything is and not go stumbling around."

 After his death in 1951, Mrs. Doud kept it that way. When she was showing us around, she suddenly said, rather crossly, "That table does not belong here!" And moved it back to the place it had occupied for nearly fifty years.

We got a lot more material than I had hoped for in Denver, wonderful period stuff like the Douds’ furniture. Through her old-time friends we got to understand Mamie very well. She had been truly beautiful by any standard with her vivid blue eyes, high coloring and delicate skin; dainty, too, as girls of her era were supposed to be. Yet she managed to adjust to the vicissitudes of army life—government barracks-like houses or palm-thatched insect-ridden shanties in the tropics; constant uprootings with abrupt changes of friends, food and water; never knowing how long she would be anywhere. Until they bought the farm in Gettysburg the Eisenhowers always lived in other people's houses—those usually belonging to the United States Government.

It was rather rugged for a girl brought up like Mamie, the acknowledged belle and spoiled beauty of a small western city as Denver was then. That she adjusted triumphantly showed the quality of her love for Ike as well as a hardy constitution.

Yet Mamie always considered herself delicate; was in fact hypochondriac. By the time I knew her, if she sneezed twice, she thought she had flu and if she coughed, it was developing into pneumonia. She took to her bed at the drop of a thermometer.

After talking with people in Denver we were much more sympathetic to Mamie's harmless little foibles. Two of her sisters had died in their teens of quite different causes (heart trouble and kidney infection). The Douds were a very close family and these two tragedies were a great sorrow to Mamie; and they convinced her that she, too, was destined to die young. It was quite understandable.

We returned to Cedarhurst to write the book for which Squeaky did charming little line drawings. I was quite right about the book requiring a lot of padding, but this consisted of brief excursions into the pleasant past many people like to read about.

I was totally wrong about the sale of the book. I delivered the manuscript to my agent, Margot Johnson, in January 1954, and started to drive to Florida. As Squeaky and I walked into the house where we were to spend the night in Washington, the maid said, "Mr. Hatch, the White House has been trying to reach you. The message is please calling Mrs. McCaffree." I grabbed a telephone and was put through quickly. Mrs. McCaffree said, "A Mr. Gould, who seems to represent one of the women's magazines—McCall’s or Women's Home Companion or something like that—has been calling us."

"It's the Ladies' Home Journal," I corrected her, thinking in horror of Bruce Gould's reaction if he had heard her mixing up his sacred magazine with those others. "Well, anyway, he seems to be going to serialize the book and we would like to talk about it with you tomorrow at eleven," said Mrs. McCaffree.

"I'll be there," I said.

That's how I heard that I had broken into the rich lode of the Journal. Even as visions of dollars danced in my head, I was distressed that Mamie did not have better public relations advice. Jim Hagerty had things well in hand in the West Wing but the East Wing was clearly still an amateur show.

The Journal bought Red Carpet For Mamie. The title was a reference to the red carpet Mrs. Doud always stretched down the terrace steps.

The book had an excellent sale both in hard cover and paperback. All of which shows that my publisher was smarter than I, a pleasant but seldom thing.

After doing Mamie I did not see the Eisenhowers again while they were in the White House. There was no further opportunity to help Ike, and I have always made a point of not asking to see busy men unless there was a very good reason. In addition, the ranks of official protectors had closed around him, and Ike, the good soldier still, made no such efforts to break out of the prison of protocol, as did Kennedy and Lyndon Johnson.

While they were in the White House most of the entertaining the Eisenhowers did was strictly business, and Mamie hated every minute of it. Thus my view of Ike's Presidency was not privileged and personal, as had been my experience of his life between his return from the war and his election. I had no more inside information than any television viewer, and less than some.

What I did have, however, was knowledge of his mental processes, his ideals and prejudices and his personal quirks gained during those years of intimacy. Once having been involved and deeply committed to him, I remained so and therefore followed his every move with intense interest and waning hope.

Though Eisenhower's domestic policies were much more conservative than many people wished, under his guidance African Americans made more progress than they had in all the generations since Reconstruction (though they have made a great deal more since). Though Senator Joseph R. McCarthy and his ultraconservative cohorts ran wild for a couple of years, Ike loyally supported his people in their middle-road course and in the end, McCarthyism was abolished with the assistance of the United States Senate. And, though Eisenhower is reported to have said that appointing Earl Warren as Chief Justice o£ the Supreme Court was "the stupidest thing I ever did," he loyally implemented the decisions of that Court, when necessary, with troops as in Arkansas.

When viewed from the chaotic sixties the Eisenhower years seem downright halcyon, though they did not look that way then.

Ike kept things on a fairly even keel, and most of the disappointments we suffered were due to the very qualities that made him the beloved figure he was.

Great Presidents have always used the powers of the Presidency to the full, and even overstepped them. Thomas Jefferson, the great proponent of States Rights and opponent of a strong executive, concluded the Louisiana Purchase with no legal right to do so, but the moral imperative of the clear advantage to his country.

Abraham Lincoln, Theodore Roosevelt, Woodrow Wilson and Franklin Roosevelt all went beyond a strict construction of the Constitution.

Eisenhower was so completely dedicated to the principles of democracy and so conscious of being a military man in the White House that he idealistically refused to employ some of the powers that were legitimately his. Thus he missed many opportunities to implement his own views and bowed too frequently to the wishes of Congress, the advice of his Cabinet and personal staff. This gave an appearance of drift to a nation that was crying out for leadership.

At the same time that Eisenhower was limiting the presidential powers because of his self-conscious concern over his military background, he reorganized his personal advisory group like an army staff. It was divided into sections each under a chief or head man and each responsible for a different area of activity such as legal, foreign affairs, minority races, economics, liaison with Congress, etc. etc. Sherman Adams was Chief of Staff responsible for coordination, which was not too well carried out. Almost everything that Ike read was predigested for him so he generally saw what his staff wished and got very few outside opinions except from the columnists he liked, such as Arthur Krock (New York Times) and David Lawrence (New York Herald Tribune and New York Sun). The lines of command ran straight and clear; and going outside of channels was frowned upon. This set- up insulated Eisenhower from contact with grass roots opinion.

In addition, he followed his theory of command, which was to assign specific tasks to his field commanders (Cabinet.) As long as their performance appeared to be satisfactory, he was loth to interfere with their tactics, reserving to himself major policy or strategic decisions. This was particularly true of his relationship with Secretary of State, John Foster Dulles, to whom he gave an almost completely free hand in the conduct of foreign affairs. All the great Presidents have been their own secretaries of state, a responsibility with which they are specifically charged by the Constitution.

In the field of foreign affairs Eisenhower's worst blooper was due to one of his finest qualities, his integrity. When our U2 spy plane was shot down in Russia just before the President was to hold a summit meeting with Nikita Khrushchev in Paris there was an unholy row. Allen Dulles, head of the CIA, went to the President offering to take full responsibility and suggesting that Ike fire him. There is also reason to suppose that Khrushchev, who seemed to want to negotiate our differences seriously, would have been willing to accept this rather flimsy explanation.

But Ike would not have it. He insisted, according to the code of military honor, that he, the Commander-in-Chief, would take full responsibility. As a result, Khrushchev was forced by enraged Russian public opinion and the hard-liners in the Politburo to turn the Paris meeting into a shambles.

In this case Eisenhower carried integrity too far. When the peace of the world is at stake a diplomatic lie is the duty of a statesman.

After General Eisenhower left the Presidency, our friendly relations were resumed. I talked with him several times in Gettysburg concerning books I was writing such as Prince Bernhard of the Netherlands, Pope John XXIII and The Mountbattens. He remained as warm, humane and inspiring as he had always been. His conduct as an elder statesman was irreproachable.

Oddly enough Ike's finest speech was the last one he ever made. Only hours before his final fatal series of heart attacks, from the room in Walter Reed Hospital that he never left, he addressed the Republican National Convention in Miami.

Through the dust and disorder, the fake enthusiasm, self-serving politics and the boring banalities of that gathering, his clear honest speech that showed all his shining beliefs still intact, came like the southeast trade wind off the gulf stream blowing the smog away.

 

News media tell us daily of the scourge of inflation, crippling interest rates, rising production costs that damage our world trade, a recently deteriorating currency, successive Federal budgets of increasing and stupendous size, and a rapidly mounting national debt. These are only part of the scene.

         I suggest we should be more concerned with the evil spirit manifested in so many corners of the land. Violence is desolating our cities with causes either inadequately understood or ineffectively combated, major crimes are at a shocking level and the nation is suffering because of embittered race relations. Millions of poor are dispirited or resentful due to promises unkept and misery uneased. Many of our youth are rebellious, somehow disillusioned, but without remedies close to their hearts or acceptable to their minds. With all this our people are out of patience.

         Let us not waste time this year searching out someone to blame, even though some seem more disposed to concede rather than to stand firmly for America’s good, seeking short range political advantage instead of less popular, more lasting solutions. They are the ones more willing to extol the Promised Land than to knuckle down and work for it.

         To these and other problems this Republican convention must find adequate answers. They must be generous in meeting the nation’s need with common sense plans couched in terms that provide hope to all and assure effectiveness, real progress, national solvency and a universal respect for law and order. Moreover, all Republicans must accept your plans and programs as a personal pledge of honor, and not merely as flytrap to catch an unwary voter.

         So—whatever the judgment of this convention as to nominees, let us stand behind our standard bearers and enthusiastically seek out the millions of independents and discerning Democrats who can feel our sincerity, and the good sense of our proposals, and when the chips are down will again vote with us.

         Thus we shall carry our story across the land until every citizen of every city, village and farmstead recognizes that the entire Republican effort is dedicated to his good. Thus America, newly inspired spiritually and materially, will again begin climbing the mountain of true progress.

         And one thing more—I am not a candidate.

         Thank you and Godspeed in your great work.

 

In those last public words of General Eisenhower we heard the authentic voice of America. He was dead seven months later

       Copyright ⓒ 2024 Denison (Denny) Hatch. All rights reserved.

 

 

###

 

Was Ike Really the Fifth Greatest U.S. President?

 

Since 2000, C-SPAN cable network, has assembled a team of 142 “academic  advisors — historians, advisors and other professional observers of the presidency — 1 (“not effective”) to 10 (“very effective”) scale to rate each president on 10 qualities of presidential leadership: Public Persuasion, Crisis Leadership, Economic Management, Moral Authority, International Relations, Administrative skills, Relations with Congress, Vision/Setting an Agenda, Pursued Equal Justice of all and Performance following each change in administrations.

     As you can see Ike Eisenhower looks better and better — starting with 9^th place in 2000 and moving up the line to the lofty 5^th place where he resides currently.

     Methodology:  

     https://www.c-span.org/presidentsurvey2021/?page=methodology

    

About Alden Hatch

(1898-1975)

 

Alden Hatch’s grandfather was Alfrederic Smith Hatch, a Wall Street financier and twice president of the New York Stock Exchange. By raising millions of dollars for the Union cause in the Civil War, A.S. Hatch invented what became the modern war bond. Alden’s father was Frederick H. Hatch, also a Wall Street financier.

         At age four, Hatch’s parents rented a summer house on Long Island with a resident cow. “Fresh milk for the boys!” his mother cried with delight. Alas, it was a tubercular cow and young Alden contracted tuberculosis of the bone. The result: 23 operations and a permanently shriveled left leg. He used crutches all his life.

         Because of his ill health, he was mostly home schooled.  He was a graduate of the Horace Mann School in New York and the University of Chicago Extension and Blackstone Institute.

         A voracious reader all his life, early on he developed a love of history—particularly politics and military action. His greatest regret was never going to the U.S. Naval Academy and becoming an admiral. He was the author numerous magazine articles and more than forty books including:

 

General Ike

Red Carpet for Mamie (Mamie Eisenhower)

Young Ike

General in Spurs (General George S. Patton)

Franklin D. Roosevelt

The History of American Express

Remington Arms in American History

Ambassador Extraordinary (Claire Boothe Luce)

The Circus Kings (with Henry Ringling North)

The De Gaulle Nobody Knows (Charles de Gaulle)

Crown of Glory (Pope Pius XII)

A Man Called John (Pope John XXIII)

Apostle on the Move (Pope Paul VI)

At Home in the Universe (Buckminster Fuller)

The Wadsworths of the Genesee

Glenn Curtiss: Pioneer of Naval Aviation

The Mountbattens

The Byrds of Virginia

The Lodges of Massachusetts

Gaming Lady (fiction)

 

FINAL NOTE: If you are a book publisher — or know a book publisher — I have long believed this unique memoir as an intro or afterword paired the original 1952 biography (Republican National Committee’s official presidential campaign biography) would be a fascinating behind-the-scenes reading experience. If interested, contact Denny Hatch, dennyhatch@gmail.com.

 

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