Harold Stassen's catlike footfall thundered in the ears of jumpy Republicans-for-Eisenhower like an elephant stampede. In Washington, Pennsylvania's Big Jim Duff, straw boss of the Eisenhower forces, grabbed the telephone to talk to Ike Strategist Henry Cabot Lodge in Beverly, Mass. A transatlantic telephone call crackled through to Ike's headquarters in Paris. Then Duff's office issued a one-sentence statement in Lodge's name: "I can assert authoritatively that nothing happened at the conference between Eisenhower and Stassen to justify any inference whatever that Eisenhower would not be a candidate."
Lodge's negative-studded statement bracketed the...
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