Time for a Rest

Harry Truman's friends were frankly worried about him. "He's just trying to do too damned much," said one friend. "It's telling on him. Why, he snaps and snarls at those closest around him. It used to be that he sloughed off his troubles at night. Now he takes that damned briefcase of his to Blair House every night, filled to the locks, and sits up at all hours studying State Department memoranda and war reports. He doesn't get his sleep.

"His load is getting too heavy. He's trying to run everything. He'll see anybody. Any Senator or governor or anybody else who has his eye on a patronage job of district attorney, or even chicken-feed jobs, can get in to see him and pour his troubles on the President. There's no reason for his trying to handle these things. He is on a wire edge, and we are trying to get him to take a vacation. He's got to. Or else . . ."

"It Is Unfortunate." The concern over the President's health and spirits had become almost international. London's grave Economist thought that Mr. Truman had been acting like "a fox terrier at bay, rather than a President guiding his nation through a crisis." Washington was shaking its head over Truman's latest tart remarks--directed this time against ex-President Hoover, whom he had invited to join in the appeal for grain for India. As he was leaving, Hoover told Truman: "I'm going to make a radio speech and criticize your foreign policy again." Snapped Truman: "You go ahead and say whatever you want to. It will do the country good to know just exactly where you and your crowd stand."

And from Chicago the soothing ladies'-club voice of Eleanor Roosevelt was heard saying: "It is unfortunate when anyone feels the strain they are under so greatly that they are unable to think things through . . . But you must realize that President Truman is carrying the greatest load in history"--even greater, she added, than that carried by her husband.

"It Might Work." Harry Truman was well aware of the conspiracy to get him to take a rest, and told reporters so. They could keep up the propaganda, he quipped, and it might work. He had decided definitely that it could not be Key West; pictures of the President lolling on warm sand, he thought, would not look well beside pictures of G.I.s slogging through mud and snow in Korea. But along about the first of next month, Harry Truman might leave Washington and head West. Instead of blue water and palm trees he would look at guns, planes and tanks. He would tour factories and arsenals as the Commander in Chief inspecting the U.S.'s military might. No one could object to that. And somewhere along the road, say in sun-baked Arizona, he might pull into a siding for a day or two or a long weekend of rest.

As a starter, Harry Truman last week jumped on a train and rode up to the Army's proving ground at Aberdeen, Md. There, wearing a plastic raincoat against a fine driving rain, he stood bareheaded as guns boomed his 21-gun salute, splashed through puddles to inspect the guard, maneuvered a radio-controlled tank by a switchboard placed in his hand, and watched the U.S. Army show off its newest weapons. Then he hurried back to Washington to keep a date: a family dinner to celebrate daughter Margaret's 27th birthday.

Last week the President also:

P: In an abrupt reversal of form, proposed a reorganization of the RFC along the lines recommended by the Fulbright report (which he had called "asinine" only a few days before). The new plan would establish: 1) an independent RFC (not in the Commerce Department, as Truman had originally proposed), 2) a single RFC administrator replacing the present five-man board, 3) a statutory board of review--all urged by Fulbright.

P: Declared he had not yet received a letter from Federal Reserve Board Chairman Thomas McCabe (sent a fortnight ago), questioning Truman's expressed "understanding" that "the market on Government securities will be stabilized and maintained at present levels" (TIME, Feb. 19).

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