National Affairs: You Should Have Heard Him

Washington took startled note last week: a speech by Harry Truman had been well received. At the annual banquet of the American Society of Newspaper Editors, the President had droned through a prepared address renewing his plea for the enactment of price controls. Then, when the radio microphones had been switched off, he tossed aside his papers and launched into an off-the-record talk "for background."

White House restrictions forbade reports on the speech, but he had previously made most of its points on the record anyway. He talked of bipartisan unity on foreign policy, of Russian intransigence, of the need for carrying through the Marshall Plan, of the necessity for building up a balanced defense establishment and demonstrating that its strength would be arrayed on the side of freedom.

Reporting the speech, Roscoe Drummond, the Christian Science Monitor's veteran Washington bureau chief, wrote: "I put it as a careful statement of fact that I have never heard any political personage receive any longer, more sustained or more spontaneous applause than came from that group of overwhelmingly Republican newspaper editors. They liked what Mr. Truman had to say and they liked the way he said it. They felt an integrity, a humility, a morality of purpose . . . which stirred their esteem, their regard and their good will."

A good two score of the guests remarked to Presidential Press Secretary Charles Ross that if Harry Truman carried on his campaign with that kind of effectiveness, "he'll be a hard guy to beat."

The comment was not lost on National Chairman J. Howard McGrath, who had long been aware that his candidate was most effective when speaking off the cuff. He renewed an old campaign to get the President to take a long, leisurely transcontinental train trip.

The President apparently agreed. He announced that he had accepted an invitation to deliver the commencement address at the University of California in June. All along the route, there would probably be plenty of back-platform appearances, where Harry Truman could be at his informal, spontaneous best.