"They'll Tear You Apart"

To the 2,000,000-odd Americans who heard one of his speeches (more than 50) in the West last week, Harry Truman might have seemed like a doughty fighting man who had not a doubt about his election. But those who saw him at close range could see that the strain of the campaign was beginning to tell. Harry Truman got sore.

His talk was tougher than ever. His speeches were folksy but their well-hammered themes were fear and self-interest. The country would "go to the dogs" if a Republican administration was elected. He pictured the Republicans as tools of "the most reactionary elements . . . silent and cunning men," who would "skim the cream from our natural resources to satisfy their own greed," who would "tear the country apart." They were "bloodsuckers with offices in Wall Street. . . princes of privilege . . . plunderers."

Aboard his 17-car train, some of his advisers felt that his scolding and name-calling was far below the standard of dignity for a U.S. President. Some pleaded with him to put his case in more statesmanlike phrases. But the President was determined, it seemed, to keep pouring out invective.

Eager, but Disappointed. At the start of the week, his throat was raw. He had almost shouted himself out of voice. The hourly swabbings of his throat only helped make his temper raw. At a midnight stop at Ogden, Utah, he interrupted his blistering attack on Congress to scold and silence a group of noisy boys who had climbed a nearby tree. In San Francisco and Oakland he was bitterly disappointed by unenthusiastic audiences and by the absence of crowds along the sidewalks. In Oakland he took it out on cameramen who popped their flashes at him. The camera corps, which rates him as the most obliging and patient of Presidents, was astonished as he snapped: "I have trouble enough seeing, as it is.

Those things blind me. Stop it.

Stop it."

But Candidate Truman was most infuriated by Candidate Tom Dewey's refusal to take his bait and get into a slugging match with him.

The President and his advisers are among Tom Dewey's most eager radio listeners--and his most disappointed. The Democratic National Committee's poverty also angers the presidential party; while the Republicans and Henry Wallace can afford radio time, Candidate Truman goes unheard on the networks.*

The President regained his voice and some of his normal good humor at Los Angeles. He had a smidgin of good news. The Gallup Poll showed him way ahead in Minnesota and edging up in California.

He also got his warmest applause of the week for his best speech of the week: an appeal for Wallaceites to return to the Democratic fold.

Said Harry Truman: "There are some people with true liberal convictions whose worry over the state of the world has caused them to lean to a third party ... I say to those disturbed liberals . . . think again. Don't waste your vote. This is the hour for the liberal forces of America to unite . . . Together we can rout the forces of reaction once again."

Doves & Honey. Working his way back east, Candidate Truman bore down on his theme that the Republican Congress wants to put control of Government-developed power "into the hands of hijackers--so they can stick you with high prices." At El Paso he charged that Republican leaders in Congress had "cut the reclamation program for the West by more than 50%." He continued: "Now, what do you suppose the Republican chairman of the Appropriations Committee [New York's John Taber] thought about your protests? He said, 'The West is squealing like a stuck pig.' That is what the Republican leaders thought about you [in] this part of the world."* In touchy Texas, Candidate Truman had not a word to say about civil rights or Dixiecrats.

But he made one visit which he hoped would assure him Texas' 23 electoral votes.

Early on Sunday morning, he stopped at the Uvalde home of aging (79), still chipper John Nance Garner. "Cactus Jack" had spread a super-Texas breakfast: orange juice, mourning dove, white-winged dove,* chicken, rice and gravy, ham, bacon, scrambled eggs, biscuits, honey, preserves, pecans, coffee. Harry Truman ate some of everything in sight, said it was the biggest breakfast he had had in 40 years. Nothing was said of politics, but everybody got the idea: Jack Garner, that most conservative Southerner, was for Harry Truman.

A few hours later, in San Antonio, the President attended the First Baptist Church. Then, like any other tourist, he dropped a penny in San Antonio's wishing well and visited the Alamo. There he told a crowd that his one ambition is to "see a peaceful happy world--if that can't be accomplished, there is nothing else worth while."

*For Harry Truman's expected blast at Communism this week, the Democrats dug deep, bought national radio coverage. *John Taber shot back: "Mr. Truman knows that I never made any such statement. What I said was this: 'The minute anyone demands a business administration and elimination of the leeches in the Government payroll, they squeal like a stuck pig.' " *A local delicacy which can be shot only between 4 p.m. and sunset on three days a year.

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