The man to whom Eden began to write, the day after he entered Downing Street in

1955, was a man of different temperament from his own. Eisenhower's powers of leadership had emerged in the heat of war. He was one of six boys of Mennonite pacifist parents in Kansas. Like Truman and later Reagan, he was the kind of homespun middlebrow figure in whom Americans like to put their trust.

Eisenhower's meteoric rise in the last phase of the war was due largely to a talent for human relationship. "I like Ike" became his party's natural slogan.

Everyone liked Ike.

In the 1948 election, Eisenhower, already a national hero, did not even know which party he might support. He voted Democrat and returned to Europe at Truman's invitation as Commander of NATO. There he became convinced that the Republican candidature of Robert Taft in 1952 would lead America to isolationism. Since vigilance against the Communist threat was to Eisenhower vital, American isolationism risked another World War. This internationalism was to condition Eisenhower's approach not just to China, Korea and the Cold War, but also to the Middle East. He ran against Taft for the Republican nomination, and went on to win the Presidency. His style was collaborative, calm and friendly. By 1955 he was preparing to run for re-election.

Despite being a soldier, Eisenhower was his parents' son. He was acutely sensitive to the "tragic waste of resources" involved in the business of defence. "Every gun that is made," he said in 1953, "every warship launched...signifies a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed." Warmongering, he said, left "humanity hanging from a cross of iron". On retirement, Eisenhower warned against the emergence of a "military-industrial complex" with an interest in exaggerating threats and sapping national resources. He was a true soldier for peace.

Behind Eisenhower, however, loomed the grim figure of John Foster Dulles, his implacable Secretary of State. Militantly anti- Communist, priggish, dull and given to sermonizing monologues, Dulles was disliked by almost all who encountered him (including Americans). He never looked people in the eye.

Churchill loathed him. To Macmillan, Dulles was "the most dunderheaded man alive". He even tested the legendary tact of the British Diplomatic Service.

One ambassador reported to Eden that Dulles was "an awkward old buster". Eden compared dealing with him unfavourably to dealing with Ribbentrop. Dulles reciprocated, particularly disliking Eden's habit of calling him "my dear". But Eisenhower trusted Dulles and found him useful. With McCarthyism on the rampage, there were good as well as bad reasons for being stridently anti-Communist in the early 1950s.