The President's Week

The millstones of the presidency had changed Harry Truman in many ways; they had sharpened his temper, given him poise, an almost cocky assurance, and a deep faith in his own destiny. But last week, as he observed the fourth anniversary of his first day in office, it was obvious that nothing had altered the President's Missouri flavor, his small-town neighborliness, or his appetite for homely jollity.

Up at the Capitol for the social event of the day--a buffet luncheon with the Senate--he seemed as delighted as a football star back for a college reunion.

Napkin on the Knee. The luncheon--held in a high-ceilinged Senate committee room complete with crystal chandelier, potted palms and outrageous painted cherubs--soon resembled a subway rush. A bar did a roaring business at one end of the room. A jostling throng of Senators, Cabinet officers, Congressmen and newsmen juggled drinks and loaded plates as the President sat eating, napkin on knee, on a chair against the wall.

He was unruffled. He greeted more acquaintances, had a friendly chat with Ohio's Senator Robert A. Taft, and sampled a little bourbon & branch water. Then he headed for the office of Vice President Alben Barkley (who was traveling in the South), sat down at Barkley's desk and scribbled a note:

"Dear VP, Sorry I missed you--I needed advice. H.S.T."

A few minutes later he went into the office of his old friend, Les Biffle, the Secretary of the Senate. He shook hands with two amazed secretaries and dashed off another memo: "Les: I wish you were here. I tried to see the VP. He was gone. Now you're out. What do I do? H.S.T."

After that he crossed the corridor and walked, unannounced, into the Senate chamber. He sat down in his old seat until roll call was completed. Then, at the presiding officer's invitation, he rose, and spoke for a few minutes in a quiet voice. He thanked his former colleagues for the luncheon and recalled the events of the day, in 1945, when he was notified that it was "necessary for me to assume a tremendous burden.

"I have tried my level best to carry that burden in the interests of all the people of the country," he said, "and I hope that when the history of the period is written it will be said that the effort was not in vain."

The Board of Education. Later in the day he made another quiet pilgrimage to Capitol Hill. He walked into the office of Speaker Sam Rayburn at 5:25. It was the time, almost to the minute, that he had crossed its threshold four years before and had been told to call the White House. This time he was not interrupted, and spent 55 minutes with the "Board of Education" crowd, a group of congressmen and employees who drop in on the Speaker for a quiet drink every day after Congress recesses.

The President was in high good humor all week. Musing aloud late one afternoon to a handful of reporters, he said he thought that the world had come halfway along the hard road to peace. He thought that the turning point was not the Marshall Plan but the first announcement of the Truman Doctrine (which he modestly called the Greek-Turkish Aid Program) on March 12, 1947. He voiced a hope that in two more years the rehabilitation of 380 million people in Europe will have stabilized a great part of the world.

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