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The moment of profoundest meaning came at an outdoor "civic reception" in New Delhi. When Ike, with Nehru, stepped up to the speaker's stand, he blinked and shook his head in astonishment; the crowd reached farther than eye could see. In neutralist India, Eisenhower invoked the memory of India's saint, implied that Gandhi himself would today favor the dynamics of strength: "America's right, our obligations, for that matter, to maintain a respectable establishment for defense—our duty to join in company with like-thinking peoples for mutual self-defense—would, I am sure, be recognized and upheld by the most saintly men ... In a democracy, people should not act like sheep but jealously guard liberty of action." At his words, countless thousands of Gandhi's disciples broke into cheers.
Less Privacy, More Urgency. In his talks with the leaders of the nations he visited, the President aimed at no t-crossing, i-dotting agreements. None were needed. Reported New York Timesman Paul Grimes from New Delhi after Ike's departure: "It did not seem to matter much whether Mr. Nehru had actually requested or been given a guarantee that the U.S. would help India to meet further Chinese Communist aggression. What mattered was the obvious strengthening of Indian-American friendship to a point where no such guarantee was necessary." In 1960, Dwight Eisenhower's last year in office, he may in a sense be the victim of his own success in 1959. Ahead lie his trip to the Soviet Union and a series of summit conferences—all carrying a special challenge, since the U.S. has become the home of so many hopes. For the same reason the U.S. will have less privacy and more urgency in facing 1960's other problems, old and new: the dangerous U.S. lag in space achievement; the delicate, perilous balance between fiscal responsibility and military strength; the integrity of NATO as a free-world shield; the unrest in the U.S.'s backyard as shown in 1959 by and-American riots in Bolivia and Panama and by the bearded demagoguery of Cuba's Fidel Castro.
But the look on the faces turned toward Eisenhower in 1959 was the future's best portent. In Paris, during his trip, Ike rejected the view of a "dark and dreary future," classified himself as a "born optimist, and I suppose most soldiers are, because no soldier ever won a battle if he went into it pessimistically." He thinks of the future, said Ike, in terms of his grandchildren, and hopefully, someday, great-grandchildren, "and I am very concerned that they get a chance to live a better life than I had." The forces for freedom fired by 1959's Man of the Year would inevitably change the lives of millions of grandchildren and great-grandchildren in an epochal historic way. And men of hope might have new reason to believe that tomorrow's world had a better than even chance.
* Back on three packs a day of readymades when he was Army Chief of Staff, Ike abruptly gave up smoking in 1947, told a friend his method was simple: "Just don't feel sorry for yourself."