THE PRESIDENCY: Moods & Conflict

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In these final months of his White House residence, Harry Truman seems to be in continual conflict with himself, like a retiring sea captain looking forward to peaceful days on land, yet reluctant to part with his command. Last week, as he passed his 68th birthday, the inner conflict showed itself in a series of contradictory statements and a mercurial change of mood.

As so many of his days are now, the President's birthday, May 8, was quiet and routine. It started in the enlarged and refurnished glass solarium atop the White House, where the President had a leisurely breakfast with Mrs. Truman and Margaret, opened presents and some birthday mail and telegrams. Then, after his morning staff conference, he strolled in the White House garden with Bess and Margaret, posed for a birthday picture with them, flashing one of his biggest smiles for photographers.

A Full Life. He was at his bouncy best, grinning, jaunty and eupeptic, when he strode into his press conference later in the afternoon. But his mood changed abruptly when he was asked for some birthday reflections on life in the presidency. Gazing at the floor, speaking slowly and thoughtfully, there was a definite note of sadness in his voice as he answered for direct quotation; "Well ... I have had a most happy and, I guess, as full a life as any man of this age and I have tried my best . . . to give the people everything I had to give." Still, after 30 years in elective public office, he assured reporters, he felt no older than 28 and had many years to enjoy his impending retirement. What are his retirement plans? He is just going to have a good time, the President answered, and do just as he damn pleases.

This piquant announcement was in sharp contradiction to a statement earlier in the week when, speaking at the 21st annual banquet of the National Housing Conference in Washington, he reviewed the accomplishments of his seven years in the presidency.

Switching abruptly from an easy, bantering manner, the President, with rising anger, had launched a bitter attack on political opponents. The opposition tactics of some Congressmen on military appropriations, he snapped, "are right down the alley that Mr. Stalin wants to go." At the height of his angry denunciation, he made this announcement of his future plans: "Whether I am in office or not . . . I am still going to continue this fight with everything I have got. . . I am going after these fellows hammer & tongs." As a private citizen, he said, he would carry his fight to the people, "going up & down this country . . . and tell them in words of one syllable, so they will understand."

The Top-Heavy Dome. Some still earlier words of the President to the people came echoing back last week. On his television tour of the White House, Harry Truman had digressed into a brief discussion of architecture (like history, one of his favorite subjects), and he let .the public in on a scary little secret: the dome of the Capitol, he said, is seven feet off center, and "that old sandstone building is going to crumble up one of these days with that cast-iron dome on top of it."