Operation Amigo

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To Hell with It." The minor flare-up in Montevideo was a wisp of a reminder that the President's mission of far-ranging personal diplomacy is accomplished at the cost of some personal risk. The point was underscored on the return flight. Six miles above the wild Mato Grosso jungle of Central Brazil, about two hours before the scheduled refueling stop at Paramaribo in the former Dutch colony of Surinam, the right outboard engine of the presidential Boeing 707 began losing oil. The President's pilot, Colonel William Draper, nursed it for about an hour, passed the yellow Amazon River at 550 m.p.h., then decided to cut the engine when he began to get an amber oil-pressure warning light. Draper, on the radio, alerted air-sea rescue units, then notified the President about 15 minutes out, went on to make his three-engine landing uneventfully. The President put the extra 45-minute stopover to good use, lunched with local officials before taking off in the spare jet that had tagged along for just such an emergency, flew to Puerto Rico. He landed tired and hoarse.

"The more I have seen of foreign relations," said Dwight Eisenhower in an off-the-cuff speech to families of the U.S. embassy at Montevideo just before leaving South America, "the more I have come to the conclusion that America is judged by what each of us does, says and how he acts. Now this is in the mass so terribly important that each individual is often very apt to forget it. And they say, 'To hell with it—this is my life and I'm going to live it as I please.' But when you undertake service, particularly in the United States Government, to a certain extent you have adopted a code—a code of conduct that demands the best you have in spirit and intelligence and perseverance." And that was as good an explanation as any of the secret of Dwight Eisenhower's remarkable success in personal foreign relations.