A Spectator's Notebook
HARD ON THE HEELS of Mr. Roscoe Drummond's exposition in the New York Herald Tribune of the 'minority forecast'— namely that Mr. Eisenhower would not run simply because he would not have time to test his stamina properly between now and the convention—came the conference at Gettysburg which settled the matter and made a monkey out of the minority. At least the President's decision to run for a second term (if that is indeed the correct interpretation of Senator Knowland'S inter- pretation of Mr. Eisenhower's confidences at the conference) will put an end to the agonising will-he-or-won't-he that has been keeping more than America on tenterhooks in recent months. That it will probably also have far-reaching conse- quences of the most uncomfortable sort is hardly to be doubted, except by the most ferociously partisan Republicans. The picture of Mr. Eisenhower that has steadily and remorselessly assembled itself is of a weak and ailing man insulated from the world of reality by an impenetrable cordon of medical and political ghouls, and wholly at their mercy. 'I'm in much better condition today than I was last February,' Mr. Eisenhower is supposed to have said to the congressional leaders of his party. That may be so, but it ,does not alter the fact that, Republican medicine apart, one stroke is all too likely to follow another. One uncertainty has simply been exchanged for another, and the most recent photographs of the President do nothing to remove disquiet.
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