4 SEPTEMBER 1959, Page 6

I WATCHED EISENHOWER go by at the junction of Gloucester

Place and Marylebone Road, a rather anonymous. roughly middle-class area with many large blocks of expensive flats and no distinct community atmosphere. Any demonstiiition there must involve individual decisions to go out and cheer rather than a communal impulse. The variety, size and enthusiasm of the crowd were startling, a vivid reminder of Ike's capacity to get over the heads of his advisers and reach the public. Television a few months ago showed old news- reels of Woodrow Wilson's frantic European re- ception; and for all his idealism there was a remote loftiness about Wilson's answering smile. What was impressive to the bystander about Ike was the sense (nothing to do with all the publicity) of all ordinary decent mortal there in the huge car, clearly much moved by his extraordinary wel- come. Harold Laski once asked Lloyd George why he had not got out of politics at his personal peak in 1918, to which LG replied that when one stood on a balcony at Buckingham Palace beside the monarch and saw a hundred thousand people looking up and cheering, it was hard not to believe there was something more one could do for them. Ike must have been feeling much the same these past few days in Europe.