OPINION: Brotherly Blow

Despite Red Baiter Joe McCarthy's chip-on-the-shoulder attitude toward the Administration, President Eisenhower has treated him impersonally and with restraint, even when indicating disapproval of McCarthy's methods. But the President's eldest brother, Kansas City Banker Arthur Eisenhower, 66, made no attempt to stifle his indignation when he was asked his opinion of McCarthy in Las Vegas last week. Joe, said Arthur Eisenhower firmly, is "the most dangerous menace to America."

He did not stop there. "When I think of McCarthy," he told a reporter from the New Dealish Las Vegas Sun, after arriving to attend a meeting of T.W.A. directors, "I automatically think of Hitler. I would believe anything about him, and I think your paper and its publisher, Hank Greenspun, should be commended on the stand it has taken against this rabble-rouser . . . It's a shame that McCarthy is a member of the G.O.P., because he has done the Republican Party no good."

Asked if he thought McCarthy had an "ultimate objective," Arthur Eisenhower said: "Of course he has. He wants to keep his name in the papers at all costs. He follows the old political game, which is, 'whose name is mentioned the most in politics is often selected for the highest office.'

"He is a throwback to the Spanish Inquisition. He calls in people and proceeds to make fools of them by twisting their answers . . . They have no rebuttal because they have no recourse to the press, radio and magazines. It is Nazi-like, and what makes it all so much more of a fiasco is that he has never been responsible for the conviction of one—of one, mind you—Communist."

When the word got to Washington, McCarthy "demanded" that Banker Eisenhower confirm or deny the Sun story, and generally acted as though he thought Editor Greenspun (one of his bitterest.critics) had made it all up. Arthur Eisenhower obliged. Interviewed at Phoenix on his way home, he said: "Sure I called him the most dangerous menace to America, but I don't understand why the remark caused excitement." Back home in Kansas City, he was asked if his statement reflected the viewpoint of the President. "That's the hell of it," he said unhappily. "People misinterpret things. I want," he added belatedly, "to keep out of controversial subjects."

The White House had no comment.