Anniversary Week

Despite the pressure of large events, President Harry Truman was not without his share of satisfaction during the week which marked the end of his seventh year in office. The anniversary of Franklin Roosevelt's death, and of Harry Truman's accession to the presidency--the last he would celebrate in office--seemed to put him in a subdued and reflective state of mind. "Seven years," he said to the photographers who trooped into his office for the occasion, "is a long time--and a short time."

But the seven years had left him in excellent health. White House Physician Wallace H. Graham was able to report that the presidential weight was exactly 174 lbs., just what he wanted it to be. Harry Truman announced that he never felt better. Furthermore, the President had finally gotten the White House fixed up to suit him. Fully settled again, after three years at Blair House, he could not resist announcing that he had managed in the process to escape from That Bed--a carved and canopied four-poster which was installed by Teddy Roosevelt and dutifully occupied by every President since.

Truman spoke as if his years in Teddy's four-poster had almost disjointed him. It was, he said, "the most uncomfortable, the worst bed I ever slept in." To his mind, it was also too big to fit properly in the President's bedroom. Last week it had been relegated to a guest room, and Truman was luxuriating in a modern three-quarter width affair--"a kind of Hollywood bed"--with a low headboard and no footboard at all.

Last week the President also:

P:Agreed to make tax returns available to congressional investigators, in all cases where there was "credible evidence" of actual wrongdoing.

P:Presented the Congressional Medal of Honor to three Korean war heroes--Lieut. Lloyd L. Burke of Stuttgart, Ark., Corporal Rodolfo P. Hernandez of Fowler, Calif. and Marine Master Sergeant Harold E. Wilson of Birmingham, Ala.--and said, proudly: "These citations . . . show just exactly what the fiber of the American people is made of."

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