THE PRESIDENCY: The Wonderful Wastebasket

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The contents of one of the world's most interesting wastebaskets is laid before the U.S. public this week in the form of a book called Mr. President (Farrar, Straus & Young; $5). Explorer of the wastebasket: William Hillman, White House correspondent for the Mutual Broadcasting System. Author of at least 90% of the text: Harry S. Truman, 33rd President of the U.S.

Hillman begins, appropriately, by quoting Truman: "I want the people to know the Presidency as I have experienced it and to know me as I am."

To this end, Truman gave Hillman full access to his personal correspondence, memorandums, diaries and written reveries. To the written material, he has added interviews of Truman by Hillman. All this is tossed together in a jumble from which the patient reader can piece together a better picture of Truman, the man and the President, than historians have been able to construct from the records of more complex and less candid Presidents.

The Delegator. Truman is justifiably proud of the improvement in the day-to-day running of the vast Government machine over which he presides. He does not say so, but it is a fact that the personal government of F.D.R., who was his own Secretary of State, the Treasury, War, Navy and Labor, had brought the Government near to operational chaos. Truman knew that he could not run the Presidency that way. He says:

"No one man really can fill the Presidency. The Presidency has too many and too great responsibilities. All a man can do is to try to meet them. He must be able to judge men, delegate responsibility and back up those he trusts . . .

"I think I have revived the Cabinet system and that I made it work as a real group of administrators and advisers to the President."

An administrator who delegates authority can degenerate into a puppet. Not Truman. From the first, his genuine humility in the face of his job was balanced —and sometimes more than balanced—by a natural cockiness and by his sense of the President's responsibility.

The Boss. For instance, he liked and trusted James F. Byrnes, and he knew he himself had little background in foreign affairs. Yet on Jan. 5, 1946, he wrote Byrnes, then Secretary of State, a blistering letter on Byrnes's failure to report to the White House on a conference in Moscow. Truman says that he did not send the letter, but read it to Byrnes.*

"I received no communication from you directly while you were in Moscocw . . . The protocol was not submitted to me nor was the communiqué. I was completely in the dark on the whole conference until I requested you to come to the Williamsburg and inform me. The communiqué was released before I ever saw it."

In the same 1946 letter, the President lays down a foreign policy somewhat stronger than any of his Secretaries of State ever achieved—or attempted:

"There isn't a doubt in my mind that Russia intends an invasion of Turkey and the seizure of the Black Sea Straits to the Mediterranean. Unless Russia is faced with an iron fist and strong language, another war is in the making. Only one language do they understand—'How many divisions have you?'