For the Future

THE PRESIDENCY For the Future

When President Truman reported to the nation, the night before the Jap surrender offer, he had the biggest radio audience he has had since V-E day—41,-500,000 (by Hooper rating). His listeners bent an attentive ear when he talked of the new bomb (see ATOMIC AGE), and when he spoke of the Russian entry into the war having been arranged at Potsdam. But much of what he said was immediately overshadowed by the march of events. Still, there were points for U.S. citizens to ponder.

At Potsdam, he said, the U.S. had proposed that four of Europe's great waterways—the Rhine, the Danube, the Kiel Canal and the Black Sea Straits—be internationalized. This was an explosive proposition. Said Harry Truman: selfish control of the waterways "had been one of the persistent causes for wars in Europe."

Although the other two members of the Big Three were not yet ready to eliminate this sore, Harry Truman was undaunted. He said that the proposition would be brought up before the Council of Foreign Ministers, and that the U.S. would "press for its adoption."

The President also made it clear that the U.S. will do its utmost to feed Europe this winter. Said he: "Europe today is hungry. ... As the winter comes on, the distress will increase. Desperate men are liable to destroy . . . society to find in the wreckage some substitute for hope. Unless we do what we can to help, we may lose next winter what we won at such terrible cost last spring. . . . We must help to the limits of our strength. And we will."

Finally, he had something to say for the future: " . . . We have emerged from this war the most powerful nation in the world. That is true, but ... we knew [it] before. . . . The thing we have learned now, and should never forget, is this: that a society of self-governing men is more powerful, more enduring, more creative than any other kind of society, however disciplined, however centralized."