Getting Ready

Like a thoughtful host, Harry Truman made the White House as comfortable as possible for his guests last week--a cozy 74DEG. In some Government buildings temperatures, by presidential order, went no higher than 68DEG. There was plenty of coal for the Executive Mansion; a few federal buildings are heated by oil, and oil was hard to get (see BUSINESS).

The President's week was, in many ways, as comfortably old-fashioned as his heating arrangements. Not in many a moon had he glad-handed so many people--from turbaned, bearded Most Rev. Dr. Mar Ivanios, Catholic Archbishop of Trivandrum, Travancore, India, to Eddie Jacobson, the Kansas City haberdasher who used to be Harry Truman's partner.

The President, in fact, behaved noticeably like a candidate for reelection. He kissed no babies, but he welcomed four teen-age girls who had won a nationwide contest for radio talks on democracy (see cut). He posed with some roadbuilders and was invited to their convention.

He was made an honorary member of the Royal Netherlands Choral Society, in honor of U.S. soldiers who made Maastricht the first Dutch town to be liberated during the war. He received a first-edition block of the 3-c- George Washington Carver memorial stamps from Postmaster General Donaldson. Kiwanis International President Charles Armstrong informed him that Kiwanis was against Communism, for the United Nations.

Perhaps his most important caller was Minneapolis' cocky, fast-talking Democratic Mayor Hubert H. Humphrey, who is thinking of running for the Senate against Joe Ball but would not mind ending up as Harry Truman's running mate. He said that the President should get out and show himself to the people.

Getting ready for the campaign, the Democratic National Committee ordered copies of the official Truman campaign picture. It is a reproduction of an oil portrait painted last spring by a New York artist, Greta Kempton. It shows the President without the trace of a grin.

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