The General's President by John Dalmas Page A

that President Donnelly had named a new vice president and then resigned. Our new president is Arne Eino Haugen of Duluth, Minnesota.
    "The most common response has been 'Arne Who?'
    "We have put together the following information about Arne Eino Haugen, and it provides a very unusual and interesting picture.
    "Arne Haugen was born on April 3, 1924, reportedly in a log cabin, on a backwoods homestead in Koochiching County, Minnesota, only a few miles from the Canadian border. He was the third of four children, three boys and a girl. His parents were Karl Oskar Haugen, a Norwegian immigrant, and Eila Salminen, a Finnish immigrant, and the children grew up speaking both Norwegian and Finnish. The family had very little money.
    "Arne Haugen grew up working for his father on the farm and in the forest, and a few days after his eighteenth birthday, entered the army in April 1942. There, following infantry training, he volunteered for the parachute infantry and was assigned to the Eleventh Airborne Division.
    "On completion of parachute training, he went with his division to Australia for jungle training, later participating in the liberation of New Guinea from Japanese occupation. Later, as a platoon sergeant, he took part in the liberation of the Philippines, including the capture of the Los Baños prisoner of war camp on Luzon, behind the collapsing Japanese lines, rescuing the hundreds of American prisoners there before they could be removed or possibly killed by their Japanese guards.
    "Both of Haugen's brothers, Kaarlo and Martin, were killed in World War Two, Kaarlo with the 101st Airborne in Normandy, and Martin with the marines on Okinawa, in the last great battle of the war.
    "After the war, Haugen worked for a time at logging. Then, on the G.I. Bill, he attended the University of Minnesota, where he studied electrical engineering, participated in intramural wrestling, married Lois Hedstrom of Thief River Falls, Minnesota, and graduated summa cum laude —with high honors—in 1952.
    "After graduating, Haugen was employed briefly with the Koochiching County, Minnesota, Electric Co-op, which supplied electricity to farm settlements. In 1954 he opened a television repair shop in Duluth, Minnesota, and began spare-time research that, by 1957, had led to several profitable patents in electronics.
    "In 1957 he founded Haugen Electronics, Inc., to manufacture and market products based on his patents. He, a cousin, and his father-in-law were reportedly the sole shareholders. By 1961, when he changed the firm's name to Duluth Technologies, Inc., it was reputedly worth two million dollars. It has grown vastly since then, with factories in several locations, and is said to remain family owned.
    "The Haugens have two grown children—a son Karl and a daughter Liisa—and seven grandchildren.
    "Reportedly, Arne Haugen is a voracious and rapid reader who is respectably informed on a wide variety of subjects. Apparently he will be by far the best linguist ever to occupy the White House. Both he and Mrs. Haugen are said to have studied one language after another for years, and to be at least modestly proficient in about a dozen of them, including Russian, Spanish, Japanese, German, French, Swedish, Tagalog and, not surprisingly, Norwegian and Finnish. Spoken Chinese is reportedly a recent project. Nothing was said about Arabic and Hebrew.
    "The president is said to be very healthy, still strong and active, and to have a good sense of humor. All of which he will need. He is also said to be nonpolitical, which will certainly be unusual in a president.
    "In a time of domestic troubles unequalled since the War Between the States, the nation will watch this new leader with what undoubtedly will be unprecedented interest and attention, and the interest of the rest of the world will hardly be less."
    ***
    Party Secretary Boris Alexeevich Kulish sat presiding over the morning meeting of the Politburo. Copies of the previous day's intelligence