THE PRESIDENCY: Fears & Faith

Washington's spring weather was at its best, and Dwight Eisenhower paused one morning in the midst of a walk in the White House rose garden, to point out the season's first jonquils to John Foster Dulles. On St. Patrick's Day, the President pinned a sprig of shamrocks on his lapel and joined the Friendly Sons of St. Patrick at their annual dinner. During the week he pressed, as all Presidents must, a couple of ceremonial buttons: one. on the Republican Party's 100th birthday, that lighted up an "eternal flame" at the little schoolhouse in Ripon. Wis. where the G.O.P. was born; the other activated the big new Fort Randall Dam on the Upper Missouri River (see BUSINESS).

The President's week involved a lot more than jonquils and birthdays. During the week he signed 24 bills, vetoed two others. He said he suspected that the fight between Joe McCarthy and the Army had hurt the morale of a lot of servicemen.

One morning he met with Secretaries Dulles and Wilson and Admiral Radford to go over U.S. Indo-China strategy in preparation for the important talks in Washington this week with General Paul Ely, the French Chief of Staff. And at his press conference, the President had some thoughtful words on current problems.

"You know," he said, "the world is suffering from a multiplicity of fears. We fear the men in the Kremlin, we fear what they will do to our friends around them. We are fearing what unwise investigators will do to us here at home as they try to combat subversion or bribery or deceit within. We fear depression, we fear the loss of jobs. All of these, with their impact on the human mind, make us act almost hysterically . . .

"We have got to look at each of these in its proper perspective ... to understand what the whole sum total means. And remember this: the reason they are feared and bad is because there is a little element of truth in each, a little element of danger in each, and that means that finally there is left a little residue that you can meet only by faith, a faith in the destiny of America."

Last week the President also: ¶ Ordered the National Science Foundation to survey the Federal Government's $2 billion-a-year research and development programs, with a view to speeding basic research, attaining federal research goals and effecting economies where possible.

¶ Nominated Brigadier General Patrick James Ryan, 51, to be chief of Army chaplains, with the rank of major general. Father Ryan, veteran of 28 years in the church, will be the second Roman Catholic to head the corps since the post was created in 1920.