Fencing Match

"Good afternoon," barked Harry S. Truman as he marched briskly into the stuffy Treaty Room of the old State Department at 4:04 p.m. and stood warily behind the big walnut desk. The 132 reporters readied their pencils, and the match began.

After a few warm-up parries, one of them made a serious thrust by bringing up the fact that Harry Truman's candidate in the Missouri Democratic Senate primary--Emery Allison--had lost. Would the President support the Democrat who won, anyway?

He always did that, said Party Regular Truman, grinning slyly.

Would the President appoint a successor to Myron C. Taylor as his personal envoy to the Pope?

No, said President Truman, and then offhandedly gave the newsmen a break: a regular minister to the Vatican--for the first time since a Protestant-minded Congress had stopped appropriations for one in 1867--was being considered.

"A regular minister?" asked a reporter incredulously. Baptist Harry Truman said yes benignly, grinned, and looked around for the next thrust.

One came from a young reporter who, with a show of innocence, got the match finally under way. How, he asked, did the President feel about Congressman Percy Priest's belief that Secretaries Johnson and Acheson should resign?

Who said that? asked Harry Truman, taken aback.

"Congressman Priest," replied the reporter, "of Tennessee."

Well, said Harry Truman, as 132 bloodthirsty newsmen watched eagerly, this was a surprise! Priest had no business saying that, Truman retorted--especially since he is the House Democratic whip. Make it plain to him, the President told the reporter, that the two secretaries would not resign as long as he was President.

Harry Truman had been trapped by the feint, caught off guard. But now he was ready again, and the swordplay went on in earnest.

Could the President explain why his friend Edwin Pauley was asked to testify on Korea before the Senate Armed Services Committee? (Presumably, Pauley's testimony was designed to show how foresighted he had been as a reparations commissioner in Korea in 1946, but some Republicans turned his testimony back on the Democrats: if he warned of trouble, why wasn't he heeded?)

Pauley, said his friend, had been asked by the Defense Department; he was not asked by the White House.

"But," said the reporter, "Senator Tydings, Mr. Chairman of the Committee, said he was."

Mr. Chairman of the Committee, said Harry Truman, was mistaken.

Then it was over, with a "Thank you, Mr. President." Harry Truman had stood it well. He looked the way he had before June 25--cocky as ever, smiling and pleasant, but ready to take on all comers.

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