Follow the Gleam

The interesting point about Harry Truman's decision to interrupt his vacation was: Why? What impelled the President to fly 2,400 miles from Key West to New York and back again, all within 32 hours and all for a 15-minute talk to 3,000 boys & girls?

Some of the youngsters--student editors convened from every section of the country by Columbia's Scholastic Press Association--excitedly wondered if the President would toss them a whopping scoop, such as an announcement that he will run for office again. Harry Truman chose not to let that cat out of the bag. Instead, beamish and bubbly, he told his young audience in the Waldorf-Astoria's grand ballroom:

"I came all the way up here . . . because the future of this great republic of ours depends upon young people like you . . ."

Rambling and reminiscing, the President recalled that he himself had once been a boy editor for the Independence (Mo.) high school paper. It was called The Gleam, "after that admonition in Tennyson's poem--'After it, follow it, follow the Gleam.' "* Then Truman, who seldom misses a chance to upbraid the press, got in a typical dig: "We do have . . . some publications which do not care very much for the truth ... I hope that if any of you become editors of great publications . . . you will stick strictly to the truth and nothing but the truth . . ."

He mentioned (favorably) the Golden Rule, the Sermon on the Mount, the Ten Commandments and the Constitution. He fair-dealed history, thus: "There are fewer poor people and more well-to-do people in this country now than ever before . . . This great record of progress is the result of our . . . Fair Deal . . ." The President, in closing, hoped the youngsters would carry on the high endeavor.

One of the young editors, ten-year-old Tommy Piper of Lock Haven (Pa.), reported the gist of it all in terse journalese: "The President . . . told about why he had come from Florida. The reason was very simple. He had come to talk to us so we would grow up to be good men like him."

* From Merlin and the Gleam. Tennyson later wrote that "the Gleam . . . signifies . . . the higher poetic imagination."

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