Lunch with the Boys

THE PRESIDENCY

A bunch of the boys (155 Kansas City business & professional men) were giving a testimonial luncheon last week for an old friend of the President. Eddie Jacobson was a World War I buddy of Artilleryman Harry Truman and Truman's partner in the Kansas City haberdashery that went bankrupt after the war. President Truman, who "was spending the holidays in Missouri, had been asked to send a telegram to Eddie, but instead he dropped in unexpectedly at the Muehlebach Hotel for lunch. His old friends were delighted.

After the minute steak and the strawberry sundae, Harry Truman got up to say a few words. He was in a mellow and reminiscent mood. He joked about his old Army days with Eddie, recalling how as Canteen managers they had reaped profits for their artillery battery fund by selling $3 sweaters for $6. A handful of scribbling reporters dropped their pencils and took it easy. They picked them up when Harry Truman abruptly left Eddie and the Army, and began to talk about the worries of the world.

"Certain Leaders." The trouble was, the President said, that the Russian leaders simply wouldn't live up to their contracts. They had no morals. "I am exceedingly sorry for that, because the Russian people are a great people. If the Russian people had a voice in the government of Russia, I am sure that we would have no trouble." Then, in a grave but still casual manner, the President added:

"There are certain leaders in the government of that great country who are exceedingly anxious to have an under standing with us. I'll spend my time in the next four years to reach an under standing on a basis that peace is possible with all nations. I know it can be done." The President's remark may have been meant to raise hopes. What it did was raise questions. Was there "some new sceneshifting going on behind the Iron Curtain? Who were the "certain leaders" in Russia who wanted to end the Cold war? The President did not explain in his speech and he would not clarify it later.

Speculation Is Wonderful. One thing soon became clear: Harry Truman had not talked over his Eddie Jacobson speech with the front-parlor boys in the State Department, or the political handymen in his "Kitchen Cabinet." And no key Administration official was talking of a letup in the four-way squeeze on Russia: the airlift, the Marshall Plan, the upcoming $15 billion new arms budget, the proposed North Atlantic security pact. The best "educated guess" that his advisers could make was that Harry Truman, all on his own, was just trying a little propaganda campaign to start a little mutual distrust in the Politburo.

At his Washington press conference, three days later, the President seemed to be enjoying the mystery of the peace-loving "certain leaders." He said it was nothing new; he had said the same thing before. But he laughed off the idea that he was referring to Stalin, whom he had de scribed during the election campaign as "old Joe," who wanted to get along with the West, but was "a prisoner of the Politburo." Another reporter wanted to know whether the President was talking about former Foreign Affairs Commissar Maxim Litvinoff, who hasn't been seen in public since the Russians started their get-tough-with-the-West policy. Truman laughed at that one, and the newsmen laughed at his answer. It's wonderful the extent to which speculation can go, the President said. Reporters should just go on speculating, he added; it's good.

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