THE PRESIDENCY: The Man & the Purpose

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Dwight Eisenhower's self-assigned task, as he flies south to Latin America this week, is to convey, through his own popular image, the image of a U.S. policy that is not always as well understood. Basis of the policy: the U.S. shares with Latin America and the rest of the free world the goal of a world with less privation and fear, more peace with justice and freedom. The President's 15,560 jet trip through four democratic, rapidly developing republics (Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Uruguay) comes as a climax to steadily growing U.S. concern for Latin America and steadily closening relations, despite—and partly because of—the simmering hostility from Cuba. On the eve of his latest flight of personal diplomacy, the President took to radio and TV, reaffirmed the U.S.'s "long-standing . . . deep affection" for "our sister republics." To the U.S. audience, familiar with Eisenhower's basic philosophy, some of the thoughts sounded like platitudes and preachments. But to proud peoples far away, the simple expressions of good will and concern from the President of the U.S. carried a weight that had more than once turned the balance of public opinion —as Nikita Khrushchev found out last week in India, where he followed Ike's triumphal trip there by two months and met a much chillier reception than he had had in 1955 (see FOREIGN NEWS).

Some critics of the U.S., said the President, have charged that "we have been so preoccupied with the menace of Communist imperialism . . . that our attention has been so much directed to the security of ourselves . . . that we neglect cooperation and progress within this hemisphere." It is indeed true, he added in mild reply to his defense critics at home, that "our nation has developed great arsenals of powerful weapons . . . ample for today and constantly developing to meet the needs of tomorrow." But at the same time, U.S. Government and industry pumped $1 billion into Latin America last year alone, and "our outstanding loans and investments in Latin America now exceed $11 billion." Then he blasted the Kremlin's recent unguided missives of propaganda aimed at Cuba: "Very recently in a faraway country that has never known freedom—one which today holds millions of humans in subjugation—impassioned language has been used to assert that the United States has held Latin America in a colonial relationship." Snapped Ike: "This is a blatant falsehood"—and he pointed to the U.S. record in Spanish-speaking Puerto Rico and the Philippines, in Hawaii and Alaska.

"We will do all we can to foster the triumph of human liberty throughout the hemisphere," said he. In that uncluttered, single-sentence declaration, the peoples of Latin America could understand the U.S.'s purpose as well and easily as they understand Ike himself.