Breathing Spell

For a few days last week Harry Truman had time to stop and catch his breath. The burden of crisis had shifted from the presidency to other hands. The tangled issues of OPA, the draft, labor legislation were squarely, if temporarily, up to Congress. Secretary of State Byrnes was off for Paris, trying to crack the Big Four deadlock on peace treaties. Elder Statesman Bernard Baruch was guiding U.S. plans for control of the atom (see INTERNATIONAL). Poised at dead center, the President had nothing to do but wait.

With Bess and Mary Margaret Truman off vacationing in Independence, Mo., he was a summer bachelor. One night he invited 13 members of the White House staff to the National Theatre to see Olsen & Johnson's boisterous Laffing Room Only.

He was out at the airport next morning to say goodbye to Jimmy Byrnes and his party. "Why don't you come and visit us in Paris?" asked Senator Tom Connally. "I might do that," joshed the President, and sparked a brisk flame of false rumor.

In the evening he went off to the kind of party he likes best. In the informal, off-the-record atmosphere of the Hard-rock Club,* gregarious Harry Truman could let down his hair, stow away a man-sized meal of steak, asparagus, salad and scalloped potatoes, play poker until midnight. The big (but not very big) loser: Harry Truman.

At one point someone suggested a long-distance call (with reversed charges) to presidential crony and RFC Director George Allen in Cleveland. After everyone had talked and run up a sizable bill, it turned out that George Allen would not have to pay the charges after all. The call had come in and been charged while he was visiting the home of violently anti-New Deal Steelman Tom Girdler.

On Sunday, for the first time in weeks, the President strolled leisurely over to the First Baptist Church at 16th and O Streets, enjoying the 15-minute walk in the bright morning sunshine. The sermon topic: "America's Peril." In the cool of the evening he drove to the Lincoln Memorial in an open touring car, heard the National Symphony Orchestra play a presidential request number (Mozart's Eine kleine Nachtmusik) from a barge anchored in the Potomac.

Harry Truman knew that the pleasant interlude would soon end. He had already given up plans for a trip to the Philippines to attend the Philippines' Independence Day. But while it lasted it was wonderful. Even rambunctious John L. Lewis was rumbling amicably from the sidelines. Said his United Mine Workers Journal: "President Truman performed his greatest public service on the domestic front to date when he vetoed the Case Bill. Truman hit the bulls-eye."

Last week the President also:

P: Appointed a three-man Cabinet committee to carry out the recommendations of the Anglo-American Committee of Inquiry for admission of 100,000 displaced European Jews to Palestine. Members: Secretary of State Byrnes, Secretary of War Patterson, Secretary of the Treasury Snyder.

P: Announced (after pressure from Protestant churchmen) that presidential Envoy Myron Taylor would be brought home from the Vatican as soon as his job was finished (see RELIGION).

P: Nominated Philippines High Commissioner Paul McNutt as first U.S. ambassador to the Philippines.

P: Appointed as member of the National Labor Relations Board James J. Reynolds Jr., the slim-jim brother of beefy Newsman Quentin Reynolds and onetime Stock Exchange member and broker who quit Wall Street to become a steel mill laborer, worked up to a post as director of industrial relations for U.S. Pipe and Foundry Co.

P: Ordered Government seizure of the strike-bound Monongahela Connecting Railroad Co., which links three major railroads in Pittsburgh, provides switching service for local steel mills.

P: Decided not to abolish OWMR after all, named as its new head his personal labor adviser John R. Steelman, who had spent so many hours on the telephone during recent strike crises that he developed a sore arm and a tender ear, now uses a special phone with a cushioned earpiece and a gizmo to keep it near his head without using his arm (see cut).

* Formed last winter of the White House aides and newsmen who had accompanied Harry Truman on his 1944 vice-presidential campaign tour, and on the 1945 trip to Potsdam.

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