No. No! NO!

The dignified way in which Ike Eisenhower had bowed out from the presidential race last January had only added to his stature. And the fact that he had left a small loophole in his statement excited, rather than dimmed, his supporters' hopes.

Ike had wrestled with his soul. The story around Washington was that he went to his old boss, George Marshall, about three months ago. The pressure for his candidacy had built up until it was almost irresistible. Ike felt that he would have to accept the call. But to the rigid and uncompromising Marshall, such an act on the part of a fellow Army officer would be a deed of disloyalty to their commander in chief, Harry Truman--who also wanted the job. Ike thought it over for 24 hours and went in to see the President through a side door. He solemnly promised Truman that he would not run. So ran the story.

Glib Proposal. Was it Ike's fault, after that, if the pressure continued to build up? The week before the convention, such hardboiled political practitioners as Jake Arvey, Frank Hague and Bill O'Dwyer were willing to gamble that Ike actually would accept when the chips were down. Some of their confidence sprang from desperation and wishful thinking, no doubt. Some of it may have come from Ike's unfamiliarity with the language of politics.

As delegates began to head for Philadelphia, Ike issued the first statement since January (TIME, July 12). All in all, it was unequivocal enough, and the Ike-for-President drive faltered. But the statement contained one phrase: "I will not--at this time . . ." Quite possibly he meant: "Not in 1948, boys." Democrats, clutching at straws, could read it: "Not on Monday but maybe on Thursday, if I still hear a call." Almost immediately, Florida's glib Senator Claude Pepper made what was meant to be the most dramatic proposal of all.

Last Wail. Let the Democrats nominate Ike as a nonpartisan, cried Pepper. Let Ike write his own platform, pick his own running mate. Let him be a "national" President, free to choose anyone, Democrat or Republican, for his administration. In short, let Ike go before the country as a Man-on-Horseback--who would, incidentally, carry the rachitic Democratic Party to safety.

It was the Democrats' last anguished wail. If he had not comprehended it before, Eisenhower may finally have understood the role they wanted him to play. At week's end he answered them in a soldier's blunt language. He asked to be spared the "acute embarrassment" of any further moves on his behalf. He said what he might have said months ago; "No matter under what terms, conditions or premises a proposal might be couched, I would refuse to accept the nomination." That, finally, ended it.

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