1955, January 27: (Magloire’s Commanding Performance: The Artibonite Cost Overruns, the Address to Congress, Eisenhower’s Question About the Decorations, and…

1955, January 27: (Magloire’s Commanding Performance: The Artibonite Cost Overruns, the Address to Congress, Eisenhower’s Question About the Decorations, and the Ticker-Tape Parade in the Snow): Besides the questions raised by Hazel, the Artibonite project was consuming funds at greater rates than anticipated — in 1955 the Ex-Im Bank had to increase its $14 million to $21 million, then to $27 million, and the total cost when the Péligre dam was finished without generating equipment in September 1956 amounted to $40 million against a 1951 projection of $18 million. Haiti’s debt to the Ex-Im Bank for Artibonite loans ended up exceeding all the country’s other debts combined. Yet the regime still enjoyed momentum: in 1954 Magloire paid visits to Venezuela, Colombia, Nicaragua, Panama, and Puerto Rico. Early in 1955, in what Time rightly called a commanding performance, the president climaxed his travels with a state visit to Washington that included an impressive address to a joint session of Congress on January 27, 1955 — the peroration, as Hogar Nicolas pointed out, amounted to an exorcism of 1915: from time to time clouds darkened the atmosphere of confidence between the two countries, Magloire said, but for better or worse they believed their destiny was closely linked with that of the great American democracy. When General Eisenhower, admiring his guest’s wide assortment of decorations, asked where he had gotten them, Magloire unhesitatingly and truthfully replied that he had earned them on the Champ de Mars. In New York there was a ticker-tape parade laced with real snow in freezing weather, Sunday mass, luncheon with Cardinal Spellman, and — covering all bases — evening prayer in Harlem with the Reverend Adam Clayton Powell Jr. at his Abyssinian Baptist Church. Equal triumphs followed in Canada and Jamaica, whence the presidential party were conveyed home aboard the British aircraft carrier H.M.S. Triumph, on whose flight deck Magloire became the first incumbent Haitian chief of state since Toussaint at the Môle to receive a British guard of honor. Never again would the cheers ring so loud.