Liberty's Victory

When V-J day finally came, it was an anticlimax. The war had been over for 18 days; the ceremony on the scrubbed deck of the Missouri was historic, certainly, but it seemed a long way away. President Truman, who had already issued numberless historic statements in his four and a half months in office, had little new to say. But he said it, sitting in the radio room of the White House, in tones of such sincerity that his 35,000,000 listeners were impressed:

"This is a victory of more than arms alone. This is a victory of liberty over tyranny. . . . Back of it all were the will and spirit and determination of a free people--who know what freedom is. ... Liberty does not make all men perfect, nor all society secure. But it has provided more solid progress and happiness and decency for more people than any other philosophy of government in history. And this day has shown again that it provides the greatest strength and the greatest power which man has ever reached. . . ."

Next night, to the U.S. armed forces, the President broadcast another solemn message: "War must be abolished from the earth if the earth, as we know it, is to remain. Civilization cannot survive another total war. . . . We depend on you, who have known war in all its horror, to keep this nation aware that only through cooperation among all nations can any nation remain wholly secure."

Cause & Cure. During the week the President had given the nation an official record of how war had come to an insecure U.S., and an unequivocal statement that he favored putting all the armed forces under a unified command.

Moving steadily along the way to normal times, he abolished the Office of War Information--with a nod of praise to OWI Boss Elmer Davis--and appointed his great & good friend, Washington Businessman George E. Allen, to find ways of lopping off other bureaus and agencies. From Budget Director Harold Smith he got an estimate that the U.S. would spend about one-third less in the 1946 fiscal year than the $100 billions it spent in 1945.

The President also:

P: Received from Henry Ford II (with approval of the OPA) a pearl-grey, four-door Ford sedan, first off the postwar Ford production line.*

P:Received from a delegation of Arizonans (who want a veterans' hospital located near Phoenix) a so-called ten-gallon cow-puncher's hat, its color matching the Ford's.

P: Appointed Byron Price, of the abolished Office of Censorship, to be public-relations adviser to General Eisenhower in occupied Germany.

P: Received a courtesy call from Mme. Chiang Kai-shek--who then emplaned for China after a year in the U.S.--and told her that he would like very much to meet the Generalissimo.

P: Canceled the minimum work week of 48 hours in war industries.

* President Truman may, if he likes, regard the car as a personal gift. There is no law covering U.S. citizens' gifts to a President. A constitutional dictum bans the President from accepting gifts from kings, princes or foreign states, but he may accept such gifts for the nation, enjoy their use while he remains President.

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