Vicarious Atonement

The first volume of Harry Truman's memoirs, serialized in LIFE, brought denials from Henry Wallace, ex-Secretary of State James Byrnes, ex-Attorney General Francis Biddle and ex-Foreign Economic Administrator Leo Crowley. This week the first installment of Mr. Truman's second volume brought denials from Bernard Baruch, General Albert Wedemeyer and onetime Ambassador Patrick Hurley.

P:Wrote Truman: "Baruch is the only man to my knowledge who has built a reputation on a self-assumed unofficial status as [presidential] 'adviser.'" Truman said that the 1946 U.S. atomic-control proposals which bore Baruch's name were mainly drawn up by Dean Acheson and former AEC Chairman David Lilienthal. From Hobcaw Barony, his South Carolina plantation, Baruch retorted, "When the full story of the drafting of our atomic-energy proposals is made public, including all and not part of the facts in Mr. Truman's possession, history will show no basis for this display of personal spite." Actually, said Baruch, when he took on the atomic-control assignment and asked who was to make policy, "Mr. Truman made this exact and perhaps characteristic reply, 'Hell, you are.' "

P: Defending General George Marshall's ill-fated attempt to make peace between the Chinese Communists and Nationalists in 1945-46, Truman declared, "Hurley and Wedemeyer led me to think that they believed" in the possibility of collaboration between Chiang Kai-shek and the Communists. Replied General Albert Wedemeyer, former U.S. commander in the China Theater: "This is not correct, speaking for myself."

P: Hurley, wrote Truman, "was an impetuous sort of person" who, in November 1945, while still Ambassador to China, publicly attacked the U.S.'s China policy less than two hours after he had been amiably discussing the Chinese situation with Truman. At that point, said Truman, "I realized that Hurley would have to go." In a 16-page rebuttal, Pat Hurley claimed that he had resigned before attacking Truman's China policy, charged Truman with inventing "mythical conferences, mythical fierce speeches and synthetic quotations." Then Hurley went on to lay the blame for the fall of China on Truman. "Throughout his memoirs and public utterances," snorted Pat Hurley, "the former President shows his sincere approval of the Christian doctrine of vicarious atonement; he invariably attempts to make others atone for his own mistakes."

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