Truman (35 page)

⁸
This was a perfect illustration of what had provoked Marshall, during a wartime conference, to respond to MacArthur's ‘My staff tells me …'by saying: ‘General, you don't have a staff; you have a court'. (Acheson,
Present at the Creation,
p. 424)

⁹
‘I don't want to go to war,' he declared to those around him like a plaintive but nonetheless dutiful recruit, at the end of the Monday meeting at which naval and air action was determined upon. (Donovan,
op. cit.,
p. 223)

¹⁰
Surely a redundant indefinite article.

¹¹
This was his familiar mistake of allowing words to be put into his mouth.

¹²
The fact that a cease-fire, which could only have been obtained on humiliating terms, was under active consideration at the time shows how defeatist (without any help yet from Attlee) had become the atmosphere in both Tokyo and Washington. The centre of infection was MacArthur himself, who had been advising, out of a mixture of panic ('blue funk' in Acheson's words) and special pleading, that Chinese intervention left a choice only between the use of atomic weapons and the evacuation of the peninsula. The false dichotomy of this advice may well have been largely responsible for Truman's indiscretion of November 30th. The President was determined to give no hint of scuttle. In order to give Scylla a wide berth he steered too close to Charybdis.

¹³
An unusual judgment.

¹⁴
He was not.

¹⁵
‘Mr Hume: I've just read your lousy review of Margaret's concert. I've come to the conclusion that you are an “eight ulcer man on four ulcer pay”.

‘It seems to me that you are a frustrated old man who wishes he could have been successful. When you write such poppy-cock as was in the back section of the paper you work for it shows conclusively that you're off the beam and at least four of your ulcers are at work.

‘Some day I hope to meet you. When that happens you'll need a new nose, a lot of beefsteak for black eyes, and perhaps a supporter below!

‘(Westbrook) Pegler, a guttersnipe, is a gentleman alongside you. I hope you'll accept that statement as a worse insult than a reflection on your ancestry.

Harry S. Truman'

¹
The Trumans had at last returned to the reconstructed Executive Mansion on March 27th, 1952.

²
Teapot Dome was a naval oil reserve (in Wyoming) which under the Harding administration was transferred to the Department of the Interior (from the Navy Department) and then leased to a private group in return for a direct bribe to the Secretary of the Interior (Fall). It put Fall in gaol and led to the resignation of the Secretary of the Navy. The Attorney-General was also implicated. The result was the
débâcle
of the administration. Harding cocooned himself in a long train trip across the continent which became an almost unending series of increasingly frenzied poker parties. The cocoon could not however prevent the messages of doom from getting through. They annihilated Harding, who was not personally corrupt. He collapsed and died on the West Coast, and, the train brought his body back to Washington through a grief-stricken nation which knew nothing of the emerging scandals.

³
M. Truman,
op. cit..
p. 257. ‘Ready for' was an odd phrase. It is not clear why Truman thought that Choate and Princeton should be premature in 1952 when Groton and Harvard had produced very satisfactory results in 1932, 1936, 1940 and 1944. What he probably meant was that he hoped he had educated the American people away from the need for an Ivy Leaguer. But where did this leave his respected, beloved and much maligned Dean Acheson? Groton and Yale was at least as bad as Choate and Princeton. The answer I think is that Truman had an instinctive view of the shape of an American administration which was the inverse of the old-style view of an English cricket team. Truman thought that the (elected) captain should be a ‘pro', assisted by as many competent gentlemen as were qualified to make the team work well. The MCC believed in leadership from a gentleman and technical skill from the professionals.

^†
Although there was no actual precedent the gulf was not as wide as in most other democracies. William Howard Taft had gone (with a short gap) from the White House to the Chief Justiceship, and Earl Warren's vice-presidential candidature in 1948 was to be considered no bar to his appointment as Chief Justice (after Vinson's death) by Eisenhower in 1953.

⁴
It might, of course, have led to the earlier introduction of a system to save presidential time, for it is difficult to believe that the two hours which is about the minimum that even a quick signer would need to deal with 600 papers represented a very sensible employment of the Chief Executive's time.

⁵
A large part of Truman's excessive resentment of Eisenhower's politicking in 1952 stemmed from his overestimate of their previous intimacy; Eisenhower was always a conventional domestic conservative, who voted for Dewey in 1948, and had little regard for the policies of the Fair Deal or for Truman's personal style.

⁷
No more was ever heard of this idea.

⁸
Not the same man as the remarkably confusingly named and positioned other Charles E. Wilson, then head of General Motors, who was soon to be Eisenhower's first Secretary of Defense and the author of one of the great business aphorisms of the century: ‘What is good for General Motors is good for America.'

⁹
However his diary entry on the day after the dinner struck one ambiguous note. ‘The Governor has decided to take a trip around the world, and write a travelogue about it. He is going for his own education. A good thing I think.'
(Off the Record,
p. 279)

¹⁰
‘Supposedly' because there had previously in this century only been a changeover between Presidents of different parties on three occasions, and on one of them the outgoing President (Wilson) was too ill to do any honours, on another the incoming President (Franklin Roosevelt) was too immobile to go into the White House before the ceremony. Taft, I believe, did provide some pre-ceremony sustenance for Wilson (and no doubt for himself too) but this hardly amounted to a tradition.

¹¹
The novel had been seven years published, but not, I think, read by Truman.

¹
Perversely, in view of general demographic trends, there were many more long retirements in the first 70 years of the Republic than in the subsequent 140. John Adams, Martin Van Buren and Millard Fillmore exceeded Truman's post-presidential years. Thomas Jefferson, James Madison, John Quincy Adams (who went back to the Congress for 17 years), and John Tyler all rivalled him. Since the Civil War only Taft (Hoover and Truman apart), survived for much more than a decade.

²
The three were Andrew Jackson, William Henry Harrison and James Buchanan, who all ended their terms a bare few months older than was Truman. Since Truman, first Eisenhower and then President Reagan became the only presidents to be in office over the age of 70.

³
It had been offered in 1953, but had to be twice postponed. Truman valued the honour, laughed at the hat, and made an odd comment on the university: ‘A most colorful, solemn and dignified educational institution.'
(Off the Record,
p. 336)

⁴
In 1948 the results had been nearly the same. Jackson was given last place among the ‘greats' instead of first place among the ‘near-greats'. The ‘near-great' list then read: T. Roosevelt, Cleveland, J. Adams, Polk.

This electronic edition published in 2011 by Bloomsbury Reader

Bloomsbury Reader is a division of Bloomsbury Publishing Plc, 50 Bedford Square, London WC1B 3DP

Copyright © Roy Jenkins 1986

he moral right of author has been asserted

All rights reserved
You may not copy, distribute, transmit, reproduce or otherwise
make available this publication (or any part of it) in any form, or by any means
(including without limitation electronic, digital, optical, mechanical, photocopying,
printing, recording or otherwise), without the prior written permission of the
publisher. Any person who does any unauthorised act in relation to this publication
may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages

ISBN: 9781448200771
eISBN: 9781448202096

Visit
www.bloomsburyreader.com
to find out more about our authors and their books
You will find extracts, author interviews, author events and you can
sign up for
newsletters
to be the first to hear about our latest releases and special offers