'I have great faith' — Mrs Nixon

Press, Volume CXIV, Issue 33446, 30 January 1974, Page 5

'I have great faith' — Mrs Nixon

<N.Z. Piets Association-Copyright)

WASHINGTON, January 29. Looking tense, with her fist clenched, Mrs Pat Nixon said yesterday that the President “is in great health and I love him dearly and I have great faith.”

The normally collected First Lady had come down

from the Camp David moun--tain retreat where President Nixon has been secluded since Thursday to greet 150 wives of the National Religious Broadcasters in the White House state dining room.

Asked by reporters to comment on reports that the President had not been sleeping well, her eyes flashed and she said: “He doesn’t sleep long, but he sleeps well. Sometimes his sleep is interrupted by telephone calls.” Did he get up in the middle of the night to play the piano? He plays “before he goes to bed,” Mrs Nixon said. Then, thrusting up an arm with her fist clenched, she said: “He is in great health and I love him dearly and I have great faith.” Mrs Nixon said most of the women who had come through the receiving line told her they “had faith in the President.”

; “I told them to ‘pray for the press’,” she said, leaving the room. “Do the press need prayers?” she was asked. “We all do. Who doesn’t?’t she said. “Is the press the cause of the President’s problems?” a reporter asked. “What problems?” the First Lady said with a determined smile.

Slalom—H. Hinterseer (Austria) has won the World Cup men’s slalom on the Kitzbuehel run, m Austria. Two other Austrians, H. Kniewasser and T Hauser, were second and third respectively.