THE PRESIDENCY: Serene & Undaunted

It was a quiet little party, given for 48 guests by Connecticut's Senator Brien McMahon at Washington's swank 1925 F Street Club, and Harry Truman was in relaxed good humor. After dinner, he sat down on a big davenport and fell into conversation with Political Columnist Arthur Krock, head of the New York Times's Washington bureau and one of the capital's most indefatigable diners-out. Truman talked easily and candidly, rambling over a wide range of subjects. What he said was wonderful, Krock told the President, and could he print it? Truman said sure, and if Krock wanted to hear more, he would be glad to see him at the White House.

Last week, somewhat muffled in Pundit

Krock's orotund prose, the exclusive interview with President Truman appeared in the New York Times (see PRESS).

In the Center. The man he sat down to talk with, Krock reported, was "a serene President," with "undiminished confidence in the triumph of humanity's better nature and the progress of his own efforts-to achieve abiding peace ... He sits in the center of the troubled and frightened world . . . But the penumbra of doubt and fear in which the American nation pursues its greatest and most perilous adventure . . . stops short of him. Visitors find him undaunted and sure that, whether in his time or thereafter, a way will be discovered to preserve the world from destruction."

The President talked freely and informally of his first dealings with the Russians and his growing realization of the difficulties he faced. He recalled with what good will he had gone to Potsdam, prepared to offer help for reconstruction of Russia as well as the rest of the world; he found that all Stalin wanted to talk about was the abrupt end of lend-lease.

To abolish lend-lease at the time was a mistake, Harry Truman admitted, but he was "new" then. The papers had been prepared for Roosevelt and represented a Government decision. He felt there was nothing else he could do but sign. He had no staff and no Cabinet of his own. Now he has both.

The Last Vestige. The President, as translated and interpreted by Krock, went on:

The agreement the Russians made at Yalta to enter the war against Japan was the only one they ever kept, out of nearly 40. He has no hope they will keep any which now it would be good policy to seek. When the Russians blocked East-West trade after Potsdam, he began to lose the last vestige of hope for agreement. When he learned that the Kremlin was concealing from the Russian people all the facts about U.S. wartime aid and U.S. offers for reconstruction, that last vestige disappeared.

The real trouble with the Russians, the President told Krock, is that they are still suffering from a complex of fear and inferiority where the U.S. is concerned. If a campaign had not been in progress in 1948, he would have sent Chief Justice Vinson to try to straighten out Stalin and the other Russian leaders on this and on our real intentions. Maybe that will be the thing to do some time. But in nothing must we show any sign of weakness, because there is none in our attitude.