Varied Adventures in the West

Many a U.S. citizen experienced a sense of embarrassment as Harry Truman's campaign train headed into the far West. After his Omaha fiasco (TIME, June 14) the President of the U.S. seemed, for a few days, like a groggy fighter out in mid-ring with his eyes glazed and his hands down. He and his office took punishment from angry and shockingly undisciplined Democratic politicos, from a public which showed little interest in its distinguished visitor, and from Politician Harry Truman himself, a man with an unfortunate facility for slips of the tongue.

As his trouble deepened he got little aid or comfort from his seconds. After he left Sun Valley, Idaho, he stopped at the desert hamlet of Carey (pop. 600), was handed a wreath, asked to dedicate the airport. None of the traveling White House secretariat bothered to check on the name of the citizen for whom the field was being named. Gravely, the President began: "I'm honored to dedicate this airport, and present this wreath to the parents of the brave boy who died fighting for his country . . ."

A woman who stood, almost in tears, among the knot of spectators broke in: "It was our girl, Wilma . . ."

Harry Truman broke off in embarrassment, but started again: "Well, I'm even more honored to dedicate this airport to a young woman who bravely gave her life for our country . . ."

"No, no," said the girl's mother. "Our Wilma was killed right here . . ." Only then was it made plain that a 16-year-old girl named Wilma Coates had been killed when her boy friend's small civilian plane had crashed nearby.

A Stirring Sound. As the presidential special rumbled down the Rocky Mountain grades into Butte, Harry Truman was a bitter, baffled man. But Butte's volatile and traditionally Democratic miners gave him a big hand. Forty thousand people lined the streets to cheer him, and 10,000 jammed a high-school stadium to hear him speak. Facing them, he suddenly dropped the folksy role he had been playing and launched a passionate and rashly phrased assault on the Republican Congress. He spoke savagely of G.O.P. Presidential Candidate Bob Taft: "I guess he'd let you starve. I'm not that kind." He was rewarded by a stirring sound--real applause.

Next day in Spokane he swung his roundhouse punches harder. A reporter from Spokane's stodgy, arch-Republican Spokesman-Review asked: "How do you like being in a Republican stronghold?" Said Harry Truman: "The Spokane Spokesman-Review and the Chicago Tribune are the worst in the United States." A few minutes later he denounced Congress as the "worst since the first one met."

"Lay It On, Harry!" It was a startling performance but it had its effect. One of the biggest street crowds in Seattle's history lined downtown sidewalks when he drove through. His speech in the 12,000-seat Memorial Stadium was made in the afternoon, drew only 6,000. But exuberant throngs of Navy Yard workers jammed a downtown intersection in Bremerton, across Puget Sound, when he appeared there. The crowd yelled, "Lay it on, Harry!" as he renewed his rawhiding of Congress. He cried: "They are going down to Philadelphia to tell you what a great Congress they have been. If you believe that, you are bigger suckers than I think you are."

By the time he got to Eugene, Ore., the President was hoarse and sunburned and apparently happy again. He had gotten an angry man's satisfaction out of venting his spleen on the G.O.P. He had made some local political capital of the Columbia River flood by accusing Republicans of niggardliness toward the West. He had been reassured by applause. He reacted by making another inexplicable foot-in-mouth declaration. His subject: Joseph Stalin.

"I like old Joe," he told a crowd around the rear platform of his train. "He's a decent fellow, but he's the prisoner of the Politburo." Reporters goggled--both the President and the State Department had been operating on the assumption that exactly the reverse was true.

Sly Thrust. But the President's good humor was unaffected. In Berkeley, Calif, he was welcomed with banners, street crowds and lovely summer weather. A commencement-day crowd of 55,000 people--twice as many as had ever gathered for such exercises--was sitting in the University of California's big football stadium when he entered to deliver a major address on foreign policy. The President, garbed in cap & gown, responded with one of the best speeches of his career, delivered with dignity, poise and eloquence.

He bluntly laid the blame for world unrest at Russia's door: "The refusal of the Soviet Union to work . . . for . . . world peace is the most bitter disappointment of our time." He outlined U.S. efforts to bring stability to the world, denied that there was a cold war between the U.S.and the U.S.S.R. "The cleavage that exists is not between the Soviet Union and the United States. It is between the Soviet Union and the rest of the world." He called on Russia to abandon "the absurd idea that the capitalistic nations will collapse . . . leaving the world free for Communism."

He warned the U.S.S.R. that the U.S. was determined to keep strong. Said he: "The door is always open for honest negotiation, looking toward genuine settlements. The door is not open, however, for deals between great powers to the detriment of other nations or at the expense of principle . . . Anyone can talk of peace. But only the work that is done for peace really counts."

When he got back to San Francisco's Fairmont Hotel the President was red-eyed and sagging with weariness--he had made 46 speeches in nine days. But in Los Angeles two days later, he got a bracing tonic.

Almost a million people lined the four miles between the railroad station and the Ambassador Hotel; as Truman passed, bowing and smiling from an orange-colored open Cadillac, they cheered and threw confetti. Horsemen in bright shirts preceded his car, squadrons of jet planes snarled overhead. Jimmy Roosevelt, who had needled him only two months ago, predicted that the Democrats would carry California by 600,000 votes.

Delighted, the President prepared to press on, making speeches in New Mexico, Kansas City, Indianapolis, Columbus, Pittsburgh and way points. Whatever happened in 1948, Harry Truman had started the fight.

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