Itchy Problem

Harry Truman sat on the weather deck of the U.S.S. Williamsburg and bared his white chest to the sun. It was his first trip away from Washington since last March, but it was not complete escape. Each morning, courier seaplanes skimmed into the water alongside the presidential, yacht in Chesapeake Bay and delivered locked leather pouches from the White House.

Aboard ship, the President got off two personal letters--neither angry. One was for Britain's Prime Minister Attlee, the other for Iran's Premier Mossadeq. Both discussed Iranian oil; the one that went to Mossadeq expressed "deep concern" about the "explosive" situation and suggested that the two countries get together.

"Deep concern" (in diplomatic talk, midway between a cluck-cluck and a posture of anxious finger-wagging) was not otherwise apparent in the President's behavior. His other problems were itchy and only skin-deep. Under his jauntiness, there had recently been a note of weariness. His physician, Brigadier General Wallace H. Graham, announced from the yacht that the President was in "swell shape." But the President had been troubled with a nasty head rash, which showed pink above his ears and caused him to reduce the frequency of his haircuts.

Biggest "Yuck." He was living a bachelor life. Bess Truman had gone to spend the summer with the home folks in Missouri. Margaret, accompanied by a White House secretary and a couple of Secret Service men, was touring in Europe (on one of his trips ashore at Washington, father Truman telephoned her across the Atlantic). At Yorktown, Va., former artilleryman Truman went ashore for a two-mile walk at his brisk 120-pace-a-minute stride, and chided newsmen who fell behind. At night, he and his staff, including Administrative Assistant Donald Dawson (the man with the way in the old RFC), played "poverty" poker. Each man put up $100, could draw from the pool if he ran through that. Quarterdeck conversation frequently turned toward the President's favorite subject--U.S. history. Harry Truman got the biggest "yuck" out of telling the boys about one of Benjamin Franklin's scatological inventions.

Lapping Problems. The problems of office sometimes lapped on to the deck. The President signed a $6.4 billion supplemental military appropriations bill, which brought the arms spending for the fiscal year to more than $48 billion, about three times as much as he was asking before Korea. The President also signed an urgently needed $365 million deficiency appropriations bill, but complained about a rider which forbids aid to any nation shipping strategic materials to Communist countries. Much had been done to stop such trade, he said, and more could be done through diplomatic "cooperation" than through "coercion." He asked Congress to repeal the rider.

The President also:

P: Considered the appointment of a new ambassador to Eire to succeed George A. Garrett, resigned. Secretary of the Navy Francis P. Matthews has long been making eyes at the job.

P: Pondered whether to take to the road on a "give-'em-hell" speaking tour. White House advisers want him to, but Democratic National Chairman Bill Boyle is against it. Boyle thinks that the President would be throwing away his Sunday punch too soon, should wait to tour in 1952.

P: Granted special leave to Private James Hardcastle of Fort Dix, N.J., so that he could attend the Barnard College Senior Ball with his fiancee, 20-year-old Barbara Ritter of Brooklyn.

P: Signed a bill allowing each member of the House of Representatives 150 minutes of long-distance calls and 1,000 words of telegrams each month at Government expense. Members from the Far West had complained that the previous allowance--$500 a year--didn't stretch far enough.

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