Work & Rest

By 1 p.m., the House chamber was jammed. Representatives were in the rear, then the Senators, the diplomatic corps, the Cabinet (eight present). In the gallery, Bess Truman, in dark coat and brown furs, had a front-row seat. Among the Democratic Representatives, a little girl grew bored with history and squirmed on her father's lap.

Seconds after 1:00, the President was announced. He strode briskly down to the spotlighted speaker's dais, smiled broadly at the applause. Tripping only occasionally, speaking with a newly acquired forcefulness, he read the simple, declarative statement of new U.S. foreign policy shaped for him by George Marshall.

What he said (see below) caused most of the Congress to look unusually grave. There were a few exceptions: midway in the speech, Republican Leader Bob Taft took off his glasses, rubbed his face and yawned prodigiously in his front-row seat. When the Congress rose to applaud at the end of the speech, Harry Truman's grim expression was outdone only by that of New York's Communist-line Representative, Vito Marcantonio. To be different, Little Marc "applauded" by tapping his palm with a cigaret.

Broken Habit. The speech over, the President was off for a brief rest prescribed by his doctor. He went straight to the airport, boarded the Sacred Cow for a flight to the Key West naval base.* His first day there, the President began wiping out the faint traces of strain from his Mexican trip and the feverish conferences on Greece by breaking a habit: he got up at 8 a.m. instead of his usual 5:30.

Still, he stayed alert for trouble. The "Little White House" (the frame house of the base commandant) was connected by through wires to Washington and by radiophone to George Marshall in Moscow, from whom he got at least two progress reports.

Harry Truman felt fine. The U.S. reaction to his speech was favorable. He was tanned and rested from hours of sunbathing, reading, gabbing with his aides and newsmen and fishing in small boats for big ones. His total catch: one 5-lb. mackerel.

This week, on Sunday, he drove to the First Baptist Church in a torrential rain. With members of his party he sat near the rear. Pastor J. C. Yelton, who had had only ten minutes' notice of the President's arrival, sang the offertory solo himself, preached on the subject of peace. As the skies began to clear, the President decided to extend his vacation by two days.

*His arrival parade caused a sensation among Key West's bolita (numbers) players. They jotted down the last two numbers on the presidential auto license (45), carefully noted the 21-gun salute he got, and played their hunches. That day, numbers 21 and 45 paid off one-two, to the near-ruin of local bookmakers.

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.