Harry's Night Out

At the Sheraton Astor Hotel on Times Square more than 2,000 Democrats sat down to filet mignon at the New York State Committee's annual $100-a-plate fund-raising dinner. As between party members, it was all quite impartial. The leading candidate for President, Adlai Stevenson, campaigning in California, could not attend, but he telegraphed "love and affection." Tennessee's Senator Estes Kefauver, the only other announced candidate, was there on the dais (ready to hop off for California), but his presence did not mean that this was his crowd. That peripatetic "inactive" candidate, New York's Governor Averell Harriman, was there leading the cheers, and matchbooks labeled "Draft Harriman" were scattered on the tables. But that did not mean it was his night to catch fire.

Elder Politician. The occasion really belonged to the small man with the big grin who waved to a friend here and chuckled at another there. Harry Truman was enjoying the role of "Mr. Democrat," the party's elder politician. When the former President of the U.S. rose to speak, shouts of "Come on, Harry" popped out around the hall. He came on. "Whether our candidate is here tonight or not," he said, "I can tell you this: we are going to give the American people a chance to vote for a President--and not a regency or a part-time chairman of the board."

Truman said that what worries him most in the political scene of 1956 was "the shambles that is being made of our bipartisan foreign policy." His story: "I did everything I could to keep foreign policy out of partisan politics. But the Republican politicians attacked our foreign policy so violently in the 1952 campaign, they were stuck with their own propaganda. They had to pretend to change the foreign policy whether the change was good for the country or not. [They] cut down our armed forces--in the face of growing Communist strength --so they could claim to reduce Government spending. When they boast about the reduction, they don't tell you that every last nickel of the net reduction came out of our national defense. Well, it did.

"The situation in Europe is more precarious than it has been since 1947. We have lost heavily among the millions of uncommitted people in Asia. We seem to have no strategy for defending the Middle East against Communist subversion.* I believe that the policies of this Administration are leading us into a situation of growing danger where the balance of strength may shift strongly against the free world. This would be a terrible disaster. I think it is our inescapable duty to point out this danger to the American people."

A Whistle Blows. Truman said that Republicans had gone "so far as to call General Marshall and myself traitors." The next day, on one of his famed morning walks, Truman added that it was Vice President Richard Nixon who called him a traitor. That was too much for Republican National Chairman Leonard Hall, who promptly blew a well-deserved whistle on Harry Truman. Said Hall: "A complete check of all newspaper accounts of speeches, press conferences and other public statements made by the Vice President in the campaigns of 1952 and 1954 fail to disclose any instance whatever in which the Vice President referred to the Democratic Party as the party of treason or in which he questioned the loyalty of Mr. Truman, Mr. Stevenson or other leaders of the Democratic Party."

* Confusion arose earlier in the week about Truman's own stand on arms for the Middle East. One day Eleanor Roosevelt announced that Truman had joined her in signing a declaration that the U.S. should send arms to Israel. When Truman arrived in New York, he told reporters that he did not think any arms should be shipped to any land in the Middle East--including Israel. Later, from his hotel suite, he issued a prepared statement that he "stood by" what Mrs. Roosevelt said he said.

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