HE was a soldier who loathed war.
He was a politician who abhorred politics. He was a hero who despised heroics. Yet there was nothing inconsistent about Dwight David Eisenhower. As much as any other American of today or yesterday, he was the storybook American. A man of luminous integrity and decency, of steadfast courage and conscience, he embodied in his wide smile, high ideals and down-to-earth speech all the virtues of a simpler and more serene America.
A son of the heartland, Ike as President had an intuitive sense of the dangers and opportunities facing the U.S. It was he, when the specter of Communist aggression haunted the Western world, who supported the vision of coexistence with the Russians. It was Eisenhower, the career officer and friend of businessmen, who warned in his last speech as President against "the acquisition of unwarranted influence by the military-industrial complex."
Among the paroxysms of the present, some words he spoke 14 years ago in Rutland, Vt. have particular relevance. "We merely want to live in peace with all the world," said Ike. "To trade with them, to commune with them, to learn from their culture as they may learn from ours, so that our sons may stay at home, the products of our toil may be used for our schools and our roads and our churches, and not for the guns and planes and tanks and ships of war."
A soldier-President in a time of peace, Eisenhower personified the respect of the nation for its military after the war. Yet some of his most eloquent words were directed against the "expenditure of billions on military strength" when the rest of the world desperately needed economic and technological help. Subsequent events have in many respects confirmed his skepticism. When he died last week at 78, the military's image was tarnished and its leadership more severely questioned than at any time since Pearl Harbor.
The fitful, yet comparatively benign—and even dull—expanse of the "Eisenhower Years" today evokes considerable nostalgia. Eisenhower presided over what many now regard as America's belle epoque. In considerable part, the harmony was illusory, but it is scarcely less cherished for that. Millions of Americans who mourned Ike's death last week grieved partly for themselves as well, for their loss of the more ordered, seemingly tranquil period that Eisenhower embodied.
The Final Ordeal
The end had been months in coming, and Ike's repeated recoveries from heart attacks and abdominal operations testified to his remarkable vigor. His mind remained undimmed until almost the final hour. A patient at Walter Reed Army Hospital since last May, shortly after his fourth heart attack, Eisenhower suffered three more attacks in June and August. Several times he was in critical condition, only to recover. Last week the bulletins took on a tone of finality. The old soldier's heart progressively weakened until, at week's end, it ceased beating. "His passing was peaceful," said
Brigadier General Frederic Hughes, commandant of Walter Reed. "He experienced no distress."