POLITICAL NOTES: Third Man's Theme

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Engraved Invitations. For half an hour the questions kept flying, and Harold Stassen kept ducking. But two days later, a reporter pried some interesting information out of a close Stassen friend. Engraved invitations to the dinner at which Stassen made his public announcement last week were in the mail even before he talked to Eisenhower in Paris. When Stassen called on Ike, said the friend, the general used his widely known device for preventing political complications. He called in an aide to listen to every word that was said.

Nevertheless, Stassen had left the impression that he knew something about Ike's intentions; in fact, the easy inference from what he had done and said was that he was convinced Eisenhower would not be a candidate. But the inference might be too easy. In a national convention, there is a strong trading position in an open candidacy, and nothing that Harold Stassen said would stand in the way if he decided to throw his delegates over to the side of another candidate. Furthermore, the ring was there and Harold Stassen had thrown his hat in it before.