National Affairs: A Place to Start

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"This is no ordinary election eve," said Dwight Eisenhower as he closed his campaign in Boston Monday night. "This is a troubled and decisive moment in the history of man's long march from darkness toward light . . ."

Over TV and radio from Boston's Garden, Ike made his last, best speech of the campaign. He put aside hard knocks at the opposition, to speak "in terms as simple as these—of night and day, of the evil we face and the goodness we cherish, of the tyranny we confront and the freedom we defend .

Forty years of service, in 40 years of great events, he said, had taught him the meaning of five words: "Peace, evil, unity, faith, hope." With the impressive sincerity that is the Eisenhower hallmark, he told what the five words meant to him, and how they would guide him in whatever decision the nation should give:

"Peace is the dearest treasure in the sight of free men. I have learned this the stern way—from the sight of war." So, too, had he learned of evil: "The organized evil challenging free men in their quest of peace." The great battle against Communism is above all a moral encounter, and freedom needs to gird itself with unity of all classes for the common good, with "the faith teaching us all that we are children of God," with hope "in the greatness and genius of America."

"Let's Just Stroll." Half an hour later, on the telescreen, came the Republicans' most novel message over the new medium: an hour-long program, called "Crusade in America." From Eisenhower and Nixon seated together informally in Boston, it flashed across the country, reaching party voices as distant as California's Governor Earl Warren, picking up issues of the campaign (e.g., a cinema snatch of Theron Lamar Caudle, of mink coat fame, testifying before congressional investigators), returning to Ike at midnight for a last brief appeal.

Then the general, after his 309th speech since the campaign began, entrained for his New York headquarters. For the first time in grueling weeks, he relaxed at a party aboard the train (up until 3 a.m.). At 7:15, at Manhattan's Grand Central Terminal, he seemed a little weary. "Let's just stroll," he said to Mamie, and, forgoing his usual military pace, they walked up the ramp to his waiting limousine.

They voted at 7:38, near their Morningside Heights residence. They rested most of the day. The returns were coming in, as Ike and Mamie motored downtown to Manhattan's Commodore Hotel. The general looked in, shortly after 10 p.m., at 2,000 festive party workers gathered in the main ballroom. "Win, lose or draw," he told them in a five-minute talk, their campaign had "irrevocably removed complacency" from Washington. Victory was in the air, but Ike, in tuxedo and black tie, radiating confidence, grinning with exuberance he could not quite hide, still made no claim. "The real job is still ahead," he said, "working for a better America." The campaign had been waged for "a line of departure, a place from which to start."