Half-a-Loaf Harry

To the rose garden of the White House last week a delegation of Greeks, thankful for U.S. aid to their country, came bearing gifts--an ancient urn, a native rug inscribed to XAPPT Z. TPOTMAN. The President was also in a mood of goodwill and generosity. He was busy last week bestowing little presidential favors on the Congress, in his campaign to save the Fair Deal. Many a Congressman was surprised and flattered to find the President of the United States on the telephone, calling for just a friendly chat.

Patronage machinery under Chief Dispenser Bill Boyle was greased to spin out job appointments in double-quick time. Open house at the White House was drawing congressional customers (about 90 last week). Kentucky's Virgil Chapman, who had ridden into the Senate on Truman's coattails and voted against him practically ever since, was in for a talk on,party principles--and party patronage! (Friendly Republicans were not overlooked. California's Representative Richard J. Welch and Oregon's Homer Angell found a willing presidential ear for their problems--coast shipping, irrigation, public power.

Harry Truman missed no chance to let the boys know that bygones were bygones. Displaying some herniated Latin at a dinner for Defense Secretary Louis Johnson, Truman mentioned the old Roman cry: "Delenda est Carthago!" (Carthage must be destroyed). Some Senators had cried "Delenda est Trumano!"-said the President, but "I am happy to say that I have no ill feeling towards those gentlemen who would like to have delenda est'ed me."

Though he had asked for a two-year extension and a stiffening of federal rent control, Truman hailed the new, 15-month local option bill as a triumph of "the joint efforts of the Congress and the Administration." The National Association of Real Estate Boards, in equally strange fashion, publicly praised the new rent law though they had privately complained to the President against it. The C.I.O., to confound the confusion, called the rent law "counter to the wishes of the people as expressed by President Truman . . ." The C.I.O. apparently hadn't got the word yet; at the moment the White House found even half a loaf nourishing.

-Independence High School students could have told the President (class of '01) that he should have said "Delendus est Trumanus."

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