"Bold New Program"

"Mr. President," said Chief Justice Fred Vinson, "will you raise your right hand?" Harry Truman's right hand went up, his left stretched out to rest on two Bibles: a White House copy, opened at the Sermon on the Mount, and a copy of the Gutenberg edition, opened at the Ten Commandments.

When he had sworn to "the best of my ability [to] preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States . . . so help me God," Harry Truman bent quickly to kiss the Bibles, turned to face the crowd.

False Philosophy. His face was grim and set. He spoke in a week of historic victories for Communism in Asia (see FOREIGN NEWS). He had chosen his Inauguration Day to give the U.S.--and the world--a major restatement of U.S. foreign policy. Reading with careful emphasis from his brown leather loose-leaf notebook, his breath hanging frosty in the winter air, the President made it clear that there would be no softening of the U.S. attitude toward Communist aggression.

The struggle, he declared boldly, was against the "false philosophy" of Communism. It was a philosophy which replaced freedom and justice with "deceit and mockery, poverty and tyranny," which taught that social wrongs could be corrected only by violence, which believed in the long run that war was inevitable. Said the President: "The actions resulting from the Communist philosophy are a threat to the efforts of free nations to bring about world recovery and lasting peace."

A ripple of muffled applause swept across the gloved and mittened crowd. Sitting in a little knot of satellite diplomats, Russian Ambassador Alexander Panyushkin looked stonily ahead.

Four Legs. Harry Truman had a four-legged program to stand on. Three of the legs were not new, but were doweled in more securely:

P: "Unfaltering support to the United Nations," welcoming in "the new nations which are being formed in lands now advancing toward self-government under democratic principles."

P: Continuation of the Marshall Plan.

P: Support of the proposed North Atlantic alliance (TIME, Jan. 24), which the U.S. would join to "strengthen freedom-loving nations against the dangers of aggression," offering them "military advice and equipment."

The fourth leg, said the President, would be "a bold new program for making the benefits of our scientific advances and industrial progress available" to the world's "underdeveloped areas." It would make U.S. technical skills available, and would assist local capital with U.S. investments. It was not "the old imperialism--exploitation for foreign profit. It must be a world-wide effort for the achievement of peace, plenty and freedom."

Its aim, said the President, was "to help the free peoples of the world, through their own efforts, to produce more food, more clothing, more materials for housing, and more mechanical power to lighten their burdens." Said Harry Truman: "The material resources which we can afford to use for the assistance of other peoples are limited. But our imponderable resources in technical knowledge are constantly growing and are inexhaustible ... Democracy alone can supply the vitalizing force to stir the peoples of the world into triumphant action, not only against their human oppressors, but also against their ancient enemies--hunger, misery and despair."

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