1948
Harry S. Truman
FROM THE TIME ARCHIVE
Jan. 3, 1949
A free nation's decision is slow in the making, and no one knows certainly
on what day of what month a people makes up its mind. Its decision is the slow
growth of conviction in many minds, the slow swelling of resolve in many
hearts. It is reached not at the green-topped tables of states, but at the
corner store and the village market, at the tea table and the union meeting. It
is taken by corporations examining their books, by housewives scribbling a
market list, by farmers squinting at a crop of wheat. Until the voice of a free
people is heard clearly few major decisions of statesmen can carry the power of
democracy's full force.
Firm Resolve. In the year 1948—a fitful year—in a nervous
century—historians could record that a mass of U.S. intentions, promises and
pledges had hardened into resolve and action. In 1948, the world's greatest
nation of free men finally resolved to meet Communism's deadly challenge with
every weapon of peace that it possessed; and if the struggle against Communism
required war, the U.S. would fight.
In 1948, the U.S. Congress passed and the U.S. President signed the
Economic Cooperation Act, called by England's Economist "an act without peer in
history...of inspired and generous diplomacy." What had been promised in the
Marshall Plan became solid fact, and the U.S. moved into its massive
counterattack against the enemy.
In 1948, under savage and provocative Russian pressure in Berlin, the U.S.
refused to abandon Europe's helpless peoples. With that decision, the U.S.
accepted the risk of war. Major General William H. Tunner's airlift blazed a
roaring, dramatic demonstration of U.S. determination across Europe's troubled
skies. Not only to Berliners but to the world, the Berlin airlift was the
symbol of the year: the U.S. meant business. (Last week, completing six months
of operation, U.S. and British planes had carried a total of 700,172 tons in
96,640 flights.)
No Dissent. Grimly and regretfully, the country shouldered the burden of a
record peacetime rearmament. In little issues and big, the signs of the
people's decision were clearly written. Congress authorized a peacetime draft
and stamped its approval on a massive Air Force, Army and Navy—without a
whisper of partisan dispute in an election year.
Through the acts of two widely disparate individuals, the last trace of
doubt about the nature of the enemy had disappeared. In Czechoslovakia, Jan
Masaryk jumped to his death, the tragic figure of thousands of men of good will
who stubbornly held to the theory that the liberal can work with the Communist.
In Manhattan, a distraught Russian schoolteacher leaped from an upper window in
the Soviet consulate to escape return to Russia. More than speeches, reports or
eyewitness accounts of life under Communism, her act nakedly revealed the
bitter despair behind the glowing promises in Communism's workers' paradise.
Largely, in its observation of the ebb & flow of Communism's tide, the
U.S. looked at the motherlands of Europe. For the rest of the world it found
time only for the quick, uneasy glance. It knew there was trouble afoot in
Southeast Asia, it had an uneasy conscience about China, where Communism was
carving out a great political and military victory. Thanks partly to George
Marshall's tactic of fighting Communism in Europe first, and partly to the
influence of fellow travelers and gulliberals on U.S. foreign policy, the U.S.
had never made up its mind to save China from Communism.
The Foe. As boss of all the world's Communists, Russia's Stalin was the
free world's great single antagonist. On balance, Joseph Stalin had a pretty
good year. He could score one minor and one major victory. In Czechoslovakia,
he had openly seized what he had already possessed in fact. In China, his
devoted apostles—Mao Tse-tung, leader of China's Communist Party, and Chu Teh,
commander of China's Communist armies—were winning a victory for which they
could thank the stupidities of their opponents as much as their own skill.
History, which would be little concerned with the "whys," might still record
the loss of China—if it was to be a loss—as 1948's major event and major
catastrophe. Journalism could certainly record Mao Tse-tung and Chu-Teh as
Communism's Men of the Year.
Elsewhere, Stalin was little more than holding his own. His Communists
suffered electoral defeats in France and Italy; Yugoslavia's strong-willed Tito
brashly challenged his absolute authority. The Western Allies moved forward
toward setting up an independent Western Germany, and then stayed in Berlin as
one gauge of their determination to get on with the job.
In the world's outer reaches, fighting and violence flickered menacingly.
A series of military coups and attempted coups ran like a fever through Latin
America. In New Delhi, Mahatma Gandhi was murdered; India's blood bath subsided
in shocked dismay and its legislature legally abolished the untouchability
which, in life, Gandhi had abominated above all of India's other woes. Under
the purposeful hands of David Ben-Gurion, the new state of Israel was born on
Judah's ancient soil. Its young armies whipped the Arabs into defeat, rested,
and then at year's end renewed the fight against their enemy.
Acts of Peace. There was little talk of peace in 1948. The U.S. had
learned the price of endlessly talking peace with men who had no intention of
concluding a peace. Talk meant only delay and delay was costly. But in 1948's
troubled world, the U.S. had reason to be thankful. In the midst of hunger and
want it knew unequaled prosperity. The year's harvest was the biggest in
history. With few exceptions, everyone who wanted a job had one. Labor got a
third round of wage increases, and strikes were at a postwar low. Prices inched
upward and everyone worried, complained, and talked about them. But the U.S.
citizen was earning more actual buying power than ever before. He also managed
to save some money (personal savings were up $4.9 billion over 1947). The
year's crop of babies pushed the population to 147,280,000—up 15,500,000 since
1940.
Women & Shmoos. Undeniably, the U.S. had domestic peace and
prosperity, even if it was made uneasy by the tension in the rest of the world.
Its fads and foibles rang changes on those of other years, but they were
unmistakably American. Bebop, a frantic, disorganized musical cult whose high
priest was quid-cheeked Dizzy Gillespie, replaced swing; the Shmoo took the
place of 1947's Sparkle Plenty.
Babe Ruth died, and true grief dropped into public bathos; a coal miner's
daughter nicknamed "Bobo" married into the Rockefeller clan; Manhattan's nickel
subway fare went to a dime; the year's most popular book on human behavior was
by a zoologist named Kinsey.
In 1948, women took the family was and their gossip to "Launderettes,"
which became a modern urban equivalent to the village well; they flocked to
quiz programs where prizes reached a frenetic peak of absurdity. The world
learned officially that man had flown faster than sound. In sport, the athlete
of the year was a horse; Citation won everything worth winning, was probably
the greatest horse of all time. Television became an accepted part of U.S.
life.
The Man. In this year, which at home differed only in accidentals from
other prosperous peacetime years, the U.S. also held an election. On the whole,
the U.S. people did not pay much attention to it. There was comparatively
little talk about it; it raised few heated arguments. To all except a hardy
band of diehards (who are now trumpeting their clairvoyance), if seemed that
there was almost no point in going to the polls; the result was in the bag. The
election would prove to the world that the world's greatest democracy could
change leaders almost as easily as its motorists changed gears.
But when the results were in, there was proof of another kind. It was
this: in the mechanized U.S.A. there is one thing which does not yet work by
buttons—the free will of the voters. With their ballots on Nov. 2, the U.S.
people made Harry Truman the Man of 1948.
His election was a personal victory almost without historical parallel; a
victory of the fighting spirit. Whatever their politics, the nation's common
people found in his election a great emotional satisfaction. He had humbled the
confident, discomfited the savants and the pollsters, and given a new luster to
the old-fashioned virtues of work and dogged courage. The year 1948 was Harry
Truman's year.
Man Nobody Wanted. Harry Truman began his year of triumph a sorely beset
man. He was popular with almost nobody. The country grinned at the G.O.P.
jeers: "Don't shoot the piano player, he's doing the best he can," "To err is
Truman," "I'm just mild about Harry." Eastern wags even gibed at his farmer's
habit of rising early: he did it only to have more time to put both feet in his
mouth.
When, in a New York by-election, the Democrats were trounced by the
Progressive Party's Leo Isacson in Boss Ed Flynn's own Bronx, panic swept the
Democratic ranks. Politicos began to desert the Truman ship. Anybody but Truman
was the cry. Through it all, the man from Missouri kept his own counsel, and
laid his plans. When he was asked to withdraw, he retorted grimly: "I was not
brought up to run from a fight."
When Harry Truman, brisk and smiling in a gleaming white linen suit,
walked into the steamy Philadelphia convention hall, he faced a sullen,
demoralized Democratic Party. The delegates had kept him waiting for four hours
while the South staged a last fight against his nomination. Mississippi's and
half of Alabama's delegation had walked out. It was 2 a.m., delegates were
sweaty, rumpled and tired.
Minutes later, the bedraggled delegates were on their feet, yelling,
applauding and cheering the man nobody had wanted. Harry Truman had announced
that he was recalling the 80th Congress to demand that they enact their own
Republican platform.
The call for the special session was a piece of political sharpshooting by
which Harry Truman stood to benefit no matter what happened. To the hostile
"Turnip Day" session, he sent an eleven-point program; Congress could not have
passed it if it sat for a year. But politically, Harry Truman's point had been
made. He had put the Republican Congress on the spot. When it adjourned (after
twelve days), Harry Truman had a target of his own choosing.
He set out to "tell the people the facts." He was no orator. He stumbled
over big words, made mistakes in grammar, got tangled up in his sentences. A
man without pose or side, he was incapable of dramatizing an issue as Franklin
Roosevelt had dramatized "The Forgotten Man," or William Jennings Bryan his
"Cross of Gold." Much of Truman's program was a grab bag of well-worn New Deal
projects. His attacks on the "gluttons of privilege" and "Wall Street
reactionaries" struck no chords. His irresponsible implication that a vote for
Thomas Dewey was a vote for fascism horrified his soberer followers. But Harry
Truman succeeded in dramatizing himself; to millions of voters he seemed a
simple, sincere man fighting against overwhelming odds—fighting a little
recklessly perhaps, but always with courage and a high heart.
Few men have been able to communicate their personality so completely. He
never talked down to his audience. He showed no shadow of pompousness. He
introduced his wife as "my boss," sometimes as "the madam." "I would rather
have peace than be President," he cried. He never had to remind his audience
that he had been a Missouri farmer, a man who could stick a cow for clover
bloat and plow the straightest furrow in the county, a small-time businessman
who could still twist a tie into a haberdasher's knot. When he stumbled over a
phrase or a name, he would grin broadly and try again. Newsmen snickered and
politicians winced. But his audiences smiled sympathetically. They knew just
how he felt. "Pour it, on, Harry," they cried, "Give 'em hell!"
Down on the Farm. There were many other reasons for Harry Truman's
victory. Housewives voted for the man who promised to bring lower prices—by
price control, if necessary. Labor remembered that he had vetoed the
Taft-Hartley Act; labor worked hard & well. Tenants voted for rent control,
veterans for more houses, which Harry Truman promised. The West voted for more
power dams and irrigation. Said a farmer: "I wasn't voting for a man or a
party. I was voting for the price of wheat."
In a moment of exuberance, Harry Truman declared that his biggest asset
was his opponent, Tom Dewey, who had cried at Louisville, "Don't worry about
me." The voters didn't.
"It Makes a Man Study." In his day of triumph, Harry Truman spoke in
homely phrases from the north portico of the White House: "It is overwhelming.
It makes a man study and wonder whether he is worthy of the confidence, worthy
of the responsibility which has been thrust upon him."
Many a voter wondered too. Even in the flush of post-election emotion, few
could mistake Truman for an inspiring leader in the pattern of Churchill or
Roosevelt. Many remembered the bewildered, fumbling Harry Truman groping
through the tumbling squalls of the postwar economy, often seeming to dismiss
his problems as jauntily as the captain of the Walloping Windowblind. But not
even his opponents doubted his essential integrity and simplicity and, in the
calmer waters of 1948, that seemed enough. Said a young businessman: "He'll do
what he thinks he ought to. Up home in North Carolina, we call him mule head."
To most, he had seemed as friendly and honest and likable as the man next
door and they were sure he was on their side.
The New Orthodoxy. What was their side, in 1948? It seemed to be the body
of ideas, laws and generalized intentions which Franklin Roosevelt called the
New Deal. It was no longer radical—it had been accepted for 16 years. As far
as the Democratic Party was concerned it was the new orthodoxy, and Harry
Truman, no original thinker but a man tempered with Missouri caution, was
orthodox clear through.
It was a doctrine that held that the Government should be something like a
modern, bureaucratic Great White Father to all its peoples. Government was
expected not only to protect the helpless, but also to make full employment,
regulate business and let labor run on a minimum of regulation. It was a
doctrine that meant guaranteed security—for the farmer and the worker, and for
the old and the sick. In 1948, the U.S. wanted a man who believed in that
doctrine. It rejected the party—the Republican Party—which it suspected of
wanting to change it.
New Load. The day after Franklin Roosevelt died, Harry Truman, the man who
never wanted to be President, confided to reporters: "Did you ever have a bull
or a load of hay fall on you? If you have, you know how I felt last night." In
1948, the load was bigger. But Harry Truman was not the abjectly humble man of
1945 who had begged every casual visitor to pray for him. He had the air of a
man who felt he had learned his job. In an informal talk, he conceded recently
that there were a million men in the U.S. who would make a better President
than he was or ever would be. But that was not the point, he said. He, Harry
Truman, was President.
There was not a new Truman. At 64, he was the same brisk, gregarious,
stubborn, artless man, the fanatically loyal friend who flew from Washington to
attend the funeral of Boss Tom Pendergast, the same engaging Missourian who
tripped over his academic gown and blurted: "Whups! I forgot to pull up my
dress." Home in Independence for Christmas last week, Harry Truman tramped
through the familiar streets with careless informality, dropped in on his
friends, doffed his hat to neighbors. Like any well-trained husband, he
carefully knocked the snow off his boots before going into the house.
A man who neither expects nor inspires pomp & circumstance, he still
likes to sit up late over a poker table, drinks branch water and bourbon, and
roars when his military aide, Major General Harry Vaughan, tells an off-color
joke. He has learned to duck embarrassing questions, but he is still capable of
insisting stubbornly that the spy hearings are "a red herring" long after the
charge has become ridiculous.
Harry Truman had said: "I bear no malice toward anyone," and apparently he
doesn't. He has listened patiently, as is his way, grinning quietly and staring
at the floor, while politicians flocked in to assure him that they had been for
him all along. To labor leaders and A.D.A. liberals who demanded a whole new
Administration, he retorted: "I think we are doing fine as we are." Newspaper
attacks on his Cabinet officers only made him more determined to keep them.
Proof to Come. Harry Truman had still to prove himself to the nation's
voters. He had run on a program, not a record. Some 680,000 who went to the
polls had not cast a ballot for any presidential candidate. Truman had polled
less than a majority, and his winning margin was the smallest since 1916. Many
a voter had voted for him simply as a protest.
No one knew that better than Harry Truman. He was determined to carry out
his program to the letter. That meant enactment of the social props and
programs that comprise the new orthodoxy—with the significant addition of
civil rights.
"Harry le Souriant." Abroad, Harry Truman's victory had raised spirits and
stilled fears. Europe felt new confidence that the strong hand of the U.S.
would continue to bear it up. To the French, the victory of "Harry le Souriant"
(smiling Harry) meant that the U.S. people had moved closer to them in spirit.
In Greece, Athenian grey-marketeers renamed the street where they sell U.S.
goods "Uncle Harry Street." Said a Tel Aviv newspaper- man: "He is a simple
human being, a man of the people. We would rather trust our fate to him than to
the cool, calculating diplomats."
More Than Courage. Harry Truman had never pretended to a great grasp of
foreign affairs. Unlike his predecessors, he depended heavily on his advisers.
Since the humiliating Wallace fiasco, he had been grateful that he could leave
policymaking more or less in George Marshall's hands. But Harry Truman's
horizon was growing. A few months ago, at a private dinner, General Marshall
rose in his place, looked straight at Harry Truman, and waited for silence.
Then he said with deep seriousness: "The full stature of this man will only be
proven by history, but I want to say here and now that there has never been a
decision made under this man's Administration, affecting policies beyond our
shores, that has not been in the best interest of this country. It is not the
courage of these decisions that will live, but the integrity of them." (Harry
Truman, deeply moved by the tribute from the man he most deeply respects, stood
with his arms half outstretched as sought for words. Finally, he gestured
toward Marshall and said simply: "He won the war.")
For the next four years the cold war would be Harry Truman's war. In all
likelihood, Old Soldier George Marshall would not stay on to help him fight it.
In his inherited term, Harry Truman, by painful experience, groping and pluck,
had evolved a policy of containment and counterattack. In his new term, the man
of 1948 would carry the full weight of driving that policy to a decision.
COVERS GALLERY: Click here to see the cover image from 1948
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