He should have complained to the manager—Nixon would have put the man on his enemies list—but Stevenson didn’t want to offend anyone, not even the autograph seekers. Gandhi had solved that problem by charging five rupees, $1.20, for each signature. Stevenson couldn’t do it. Even nervy salesmen could badger him. He was about to enter a car at one point when a frail Indian boy, having slipped through the C.I.D. screen somehow, stepped out from behind a post and handed him a package wrapped in newspaper. “What’s this?” asked Stevenson, surprised. The boy gestured, suggesting that he open it, and he did. Inside was a cheap mirror in a brass frame. “Twenty-one rupees,” the boy said. The Governor looked troubled. “Gosh, I’d like to,” he said earnestly, “but you know, I’d have to carry it halfway around the world. I don’t have any room. In my baggage.” The boy wobbled his head sorrowfully. “You understand,” Stevenson said to him and turned to Blair. “You think he understands?” he asked him. “Do you?” he said to me. We spread our hands. “Thanks very much,” he said, carefully rewrapping the mirror and handing it back, “but I just can’t.” We slid into the waiting DeSoto. “He looked so hurt,” the Governor said worriedly. “I can never tell whether they understand or not.” He muttered defensively, “I just don’t have the room.”
The Cages of Bombay outraged him. These were two blocks of two-story buildings faced with iron bars. Each room, or cell, contained a naked prostitute who conveyed with spirited pantomime the nature of the services she was prepared to perform. The purpose of the iron bars was to keep non-paying customers out, not to imprison the harlots. This was carefully explained to Stevenson. He was also told that the custom had persisted for centuries—that girls born into that caste enter the Cages with the onset of puberty while their brothers become pimps. It made no difference to him. The spectacle was an offense to his sense of human dignity, and unlike most tourists he left seething. I was proud of him for that.
In other ways he could be disconcertingly banal, even Babbitty. It was easy to shrug at the one occasion when he himself became an autograph seeker—a traveler doesn’t often have the chance to acquire the signature of a man with a name like Chakravarti Rajagopalachari, Chief Minister of Madras—or to pass over Stevenson’s purchase for himself of a native costume in a bazaar. Less understandable was his jeer when an Indian presented one member of our party with a garland and a bouquet of flowers (“Now he can work for the State Department!”) or his remark when he was told that he would meet a team of executives from the Tata steelworks in Bombay: “My God, it will be good to get the viewpoint of some hard-headed businessmen.”
“Say, there’s a nice-looking gal,” he said in Nilokheri, beckoning to a little child. An Indian bystander volunteered that it was a boy. “His hair’s long, though,” Stevenson said. “He’s a Sikh,” the man explained; “Sikhs grow their hair long.” “Back home we call them New Dealers,” Stevenson said, and I briefly felt betrayed. One evening after we had watched a performance of masked kathakali dancers, Stevenson mounted the stage and posed with them for Satakopan. He did it with a broad grin and many stage whispers—“They’ll never believe this in Chicago”; “Maybe they’ll let me into the union”; “Careful, these fellows have been dancing overtime”—and when Satakopan had put his camera away, the Governor tried to execute a clumsy little Buffalo shuffle and stumbled badly.
That wasn’t the Adlai Stevenson I had worshipped six months earlier, but of course that Adlai never existed. Had he beaten Eisenhower, those who were bitterest at his defeat would have been the first to be disillusioned with his administration. His eloquence had blinded them—us—to the fact that in many ways he was a middle-aged, conservative Princetonian with the limitations, prejudices, and, yes, the petty conceits of his generation and social class. He had “AES” embroidered on his shirt pockets. He ate too much and blamed his excess weight on his glands. He complained to me, “I think India’s got to realize what Communism is. I think they’ve got to stop treating it as something that will go away if they just stop talking about it.” In his only visit to a USIA library he made just one comment—an expression of scorn because he found a three-volume Martindale-Hubbell Law Directory on the shelves. (It had been a gift.) He was painfully eager to be one of the boys; at the beach he joined the fishermen tugging a canoe up on the sand, and none of us who knew had the heart to tell him that they were the C.I.D. men detailed to guard him. “Just like Rehoboth!” he merrily called to me as we battled the surf, and I felt sure he would have cried, “Just like Jones Beach!” if I had been from the Times or “Just like the Cape!” had I been from Boston. Perfectly acceptable, but also very ordinary, and in November he had seemed absolutely extraordinary. I was nagged by feelings of disenchantment.
And yet…
***
He made it all happen again in Trivandrum, where what had started out as the most distressing incident of the trip turned into its one triumph. The evening before we flew down there Blair received a telegram from Harold Otwell, the USIS librarian there, saying that he had “taken the liberty” of arranging a full schedule of interviews, a press conference, and a public meeting where Stevenson was to speak for an hour. “‘Taken the liberty,’” Blair repeated and groaned. Bingham said, “That hasn’t happened any other place we’ve been. It’s inexcusable.” It really was; Trivandrum was supposed to be a holiday. Attempts to reach Otwell by phone were unsuccessful, so Blair sent a wire canceling everything and reaffirmed the revocation when the librarian met our plane the next morning.
Then Stevenson started to worry. Travancore-Cochin was the most heavily Communist state in the country, ironically because American missionaries had taught the natives to read, making them vulnerable to subversive tracts. The Communist Party of India would exploit the hard feelings which would inevitably follow a total wipeout of the announced schedule. Then there would be all those hurt feelings, all those disappointed people. That, I think, counted more heavily with him than the prospect of losing a small round in the Cold War. In any event, he ended by compromising. There would be a sprinkling of interviews, a ceremonial call on local officials, and a “civic reception” that evening, at which he would say a few pro forma words.
It turned out to be quite a reception. The affair was held in a large floodlit square bordered on three sides by two-story office buildings and on the fourth by an alley. In the middle of the square was a long table, obviously the head, equipped with a microphone and loudspeakers. Scattered about were little tables for four; invited guests sat there. The bulk of the throng—and it was vast—was perched in the windows of the office buildings, on their roofs, atop and behind wooden barriers; anywhere human beings would fit. In the dark a reliable estimate of the crowd was impossible, but it was upward of 10,000. When I saw it, I warned Stevenson that the situation might become awkward for him. Obviously a lot of planning had gone into this. And there were no members of Nehru’s Congress Party present. The Trivandrum government was Socialist. This was going to be a Socialist show first to last, which meant it might also carry heavy anti-American overtones.
It did. Stevenson was introduced by Trivandrum’s Socialist mayor, Balakrishnan Nair, whose remarks were laced with references to India’s distaste for “global power conflicts.” He had a lot to say about American involvement in Korea, most of it uncomplimentary; there was even a suggestion that China’s germ-warfare charges ought to be investigated by a neutral nation. Twenty years later, after the horrors in Vietnam, Nair’s comments do not sound incendiary, but they were strong political medicine at the time. The leader of the United States’ majority party could not let them go unanswered, and the mayor’s flattering references to Stevenson merely made his guest’s task more difficult.
Nair sat down. Stevenson rose. And for the first time since the previous autumn I heard the dramatic, reedy lilt in his voice.
I have been deeply moved by the mayor’s speech. My only regret is that I did not make that speech in the United States during the last election.
You hav
e welcomed me, sir, in the name of the common people. May I say that in America, we consider the Democratic party the party of the common people, and I am therefore glad to offer you all honorary membership in the Democratic Party of the United States.
As a boy in northern Michigan I spent many pleasant hours on a sailboat named the Malabar. Now, in coming to the Malabar coast of India, the coast Christopher Columbus may have been seeking when he found my own country, I am fulfilling the ambition of a lifetime.
And what have I found here? I have found one of the most luxurious and exotic fragments of the entire globe. I have found a country rising again to make its contribution to enlightenment in the hearts of men. I have talked to your speaker and your Chief Minister, and I know of the difficulties you face.
My own country struggled and fought for freedom from Great Britain with no aid from any source. We had, of course, the vast resources of an unconquered continent.
With confidence in your destiny, with the vigor and determination I know rests in the hearts of your people, I know your country will be all you expect it to be.
I appreciate the message of the mayor’s speech. Peace is the great unfinished business of our generation.
But in the United States we believe there is something even more precious than peace—freedom. We would rather perish as a people than see liberty diminished. The determination of men to forge their own future is not, we think, peculiarly American. It is Indian. It is Korean. It is European. It is Asian. It is found wherever the children of God lift their faces to His sun in prayer and hope. It is universal. It is the yearning to be forever free.
We have much to learn from you. We hope we can contribute to your magnificent efforts. We trust that while we may disagree on much, we may do so with civility and mutual regard for each other’s honor. We further trust that together we may grasp the larger hope of a brighter, more abundant future—provided always that neither relinquishes for a moment our precious independence, nor suffers silently while the independence of mankind is in jeopardy anywhere.
I am sorry I could not speak at greater length. If anything, it is you who should speak to me, for I came to listen, not to talk. And here I am, talking. But that’s characteristic of politicians the world over. I thank you, Mr. Mayor, and I wish you all Godspeed.
***
He got a tremendous hand. Then, after a religious play by some masked performers, we departed, Stevenson and Blair in one car and Bingham and I in another. Back at our quarters Blair said to me, “That was some crowd in the streets. Leaving, we had to turn on the light in the car, so they could see the Governor. It was like old times.” He turned to Stevenson. “Remember during the campaign, when the people would shout, ‘Turn on the light, Adlai, or we won’t vote for you?’” “Sure,” said Stevenson, chuckling. “And we did—and they didn’t.”
The next day I asked Bingham whether he thought Stevenson would run for President again. “I don’t know,” he said. “It wouldn’t be pushed on him another time. It’s hard for him to make big decisions, you know. There’s some talk about him becoming president of Harvard, but they’ve just had a president very much involved in public affairs, and I don’t know whether they want another right now. Also, he isn’t a graduate of Harvard. They’ve never had a president who wasn’t a graduate.” He thought a moment. “He’d make a wonderful cabinet member, if we ever have another Democratic President.”
Late that afternoon—we were at the beach, toweling after a dip—I told Stevenson that after the election Gerald W. Johnson of Baltimore had said there were five reasons why Stevenson had lost: five stars. The Governor said he didn’t think that was quite right. He thought there were five reasons, all right, but those weren’t the ones. “Judging from the letters we got, I’d say that twenty years of Democratic administrations and Trumanism were the big things. The hostility toward Truman was really vicious at the end. Korea, corruption—what was generally called the mess in Washington—were the others. Ike’s popularity and military background I would put last. Indeed, the fact that I was unknown, and spoke well, and came upon them unknown probably helped me.” At lunch in Cochin the subject of a second presidential campaign arose again. Blair said to the Governor, “You’re still getting a lot of mail urging you to run next time. For God’s sake, don’t discourage them.” Stevenson grinned wickedly. He said, “I’ll answer them with a regurgitive exclamation.”
I left the party when we landed at New Delhi’s Willingdon Air Station. There was never any doubt about the crowd there; we knew it would be big. When the airline ramp was rolled up to the plane door, a beefy American was standing on the top step. “I’m Charles Stone, Consul General here,” he said, pumping Stevenson’s hand. “Get out of the way, Stone!” someone shouted, and as he stepped aside a battery of flashbulbs exploded. Stevenson was surrounded before he reached the ground, and I saw his bald head, still red from the Malabar sun, bobbing erratically in a crush of expatriate Americans, reporters, and Indian admirers.
I shouldered my way toward the baggage, to make sure my kit was separated from the others’ luggage, and found that a member of the embassy staff had everything organized. He also had in hand a copy of Stevenson’s itinerary between Delhi and the end of his journey fourteen weeks later in New York. It included stops in Karachi, Lahore, Rawalpindi, Riyadh, Cairo, Luxor, Beirut, Jerusalem, Tel Aviv, Ankara, Istanbul, Belgrade, Dubrovnik, Athens, Rome, Venice, Vienna, West Berlin, East Berlin, Bonn, Paris, Nice, and London. He was expected to ride a camel around the pyramids. He was going to tour the Negev Desert, lay the corner stone of an Israeli dairy barn, and address the Israel-America Friendship League. In Turkey he was slated to pay a formal call on Mrs. India Edwards and attend a benefit for the American Bristol Hospital. He would confer with Tito, be received by the Pope, visit the headquarters of SHAPE, discuss the European situation with President Auriol of France, lunch with Prime Minister Winston Churchill, and be presented to Queen Elizabeth II.
As I waited for a cab to take me home to Old Delhi I glimpsed him over many heads. His back was against a wall; he was facing the capital’s press corps like a quarry at bay, which in a way he was. “Will you run in ’fifty-six?” a reporter shouted. “I don’t know, and if I did, I wouldn’t tell you!” Stevenson cried, desperately feigning cheeriness. I didn’t try to hear the rest. By now I knew all the questions and, pretty much, what the answers were going to be. I only wondered whether, here and elsewhere, this weary, lonely, sensitive, articulate, and complex man would ever get to ask many questions of his own.
Walter Reuther
Once Walter Reuther actually took a holiday. The afternoon he left he was in his Solidarity House office in Detroit, grimly trying to cram a few more statistical abstracts in his briefcase, when an assistant looked in and said, what the hell, Walter, why not live it up a little? Take a real vacation. The earnest advocate of more leisure time for everybody else was startled. He recoiled, protesting he’d be bored, but agreed to shelve the reports and take instead a telescopic fishing rod his older daughter had given him. A few days later he sent a note back.
“I caught five fish on Monday, seven fish on Tuesday, and six fish today,” it read, “and I’m going to catch all the fish in the lake before the end of the week.”
“Every one was the big one for Walter,” a friend recalled long afterward. “Everything was for keeps. He even went after trout with all twenty guns roaring.”
In their later years Walter’s wife, May, gave up the thought of vacations. She knew her husband would be delighted to plan one down to the last detail, but she also knew something would come up at the last minute, and that even if they did make it he’d find some challenge—a lake of fish to be caught or, as in Northern Michigan’s Spider Lake years ago, a forest in need of clearing. He had gone there with some relatives, “and as soon as we reached the cottage,” one of them remembered later, “Walter spotted some little trees nearby. He thought they didn’t look right there, so while everybody else heade
d for the lake, he marched into the brush with a hatchet.”
That was in the late 1930s, when he was just the leader of a United Automobile Workers local on Detroit’s West Side. Between 1946 and May 9, 1970, when he and May were killed in the crash of a private plane, Walter, or the redhead, as he was known to the million members of the U.A.W., was president of the union, and in 1952 he succeeded the late Philip Murray as chief of the Congress of Industrial Organizations, which he and the American Federation of Labor’s George Meany welded into the A.F.L.-C.I.O. in 1955. The redhead couldn’t vanish into a thicket after that. He was too busy, for one thing, and for another, his bodyguards wouldn’t let him.
Walter needed protection because he was so controversial. Hardly anybody in public life was more controversial, and few outside the Pentagon were more scarred by their careers. When he was ten, in Wheeling, West Virginia, he had molten glass spilled on his nose and right eye by a workman in a neighborhood factory operating without safety precautions. During Walter’s trade apprenticeship in his teens a huge die fell on his foot, and the first joint of his big toe was amputated. Twice during the labor battles of the 1930s he was beaten by thugs; in 1948 he was shot down in his own kitchen, and his right arm was almost blown off. He saved it after a long convalescence by constant exercise, building a modern house with his own hands; but he was maimed for life.
Walter’s powers of recovery were remarkable, perhaps because of his extraordinary drive or because, as his mother Anna believed, he had “always had good blood.” His enemies, however, also reached him through his family. He was painfully aware that other Reuthers suffered for him. Anna could remember driving at breakneck speed from Wheeling to Detroit, to sit by her son’s hospital bed, wondering whether he would live. A year later she repeated her race—bravoes had shot out the right eye of Walter’s brother Victor, the U.A.W.’s dark, intellectual educational director. The following Christmas some ill-wisher sent the union a package containing thirty-nine sticks of dynamite. After that Walter, May and their two daughters, Linda and Lisa, lived behind a ten-foot fence patrolled by guards and German shepherds.
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