Faint Edge

When he feels he is being pushed around, Harry Truman can be tart. He got that feeling last week at his press conference. It began when he announced his plans for the Army-Navy game. He liked the game as much as anybody, he said, but he didn't want to be in the show. So this year he would sit on the Army side for the whole game, next year on the Navy side.

Bert Andrews, of the stanchly Republican New York Herald Tribune, calculated quickly. "Will that be after the election next year?" he asked. The President looked him straight in the eye. With a faint edge in his voice, he said yes, that will be after the election. He paused. You know, he added dryly, the presidential term does not expire until January.

What about Senator Taft's charges that his anti-inflation proposals were totalitarian? No comment, said the President; the speech spoke for itself. If the questioner did not understand it, he could read it again.

"Your speech or his?" asked the newsman. Both of them, said Truman.

In the midst of an interchange on the President's request for power to control speculation on the commodity exchanges, a correspondent for a chain of business papers broke in. Would these controls, he asked, relate also to the cotton and wool exchanges? The President looked at his interrogator. Is cotton a commodity? he asked. Is wool a commodity?

"They are generally so considered, sir," replied the correspondent. All right, then, that answers the question, the President retorted.

There was a full three-second pause while that sank in. First to recover his voice was U.P.'s Merriman Smith, who boomed "Thank you, Mr. President," and, with the other correspondents, started for the door.

Last week the President also:

P: Appointed a new commandant of the Marine Corps and a new head of the Veterans Administration (see Armed Forces).

P: Accepted the retirement, as head of the Citizens Food Committee, of Soapman Charles Luckman, whose razzle-dazzle promotions had counted for little in actual food savings but whose noisy rousing of public interest had helped get promises from distillers, bakers, poultrymen and others to cut grain consumption by 100 million bushels.

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