THE PRESIDENCY: The Letter

All week long the President was out of sight, out of the headlines, and at sea. He spent the week enjoying a quiet, aimless cruise on Chesapeake Bay on the yacht Williamsburg. But out of the past came another one of his unguarded, pop-off letters to put him back on Page One.

The furor caused by Harry Truman’s letter denouncing the Marine Corps “propaganda machine that is almost equal to Stalin’s” (TIME, Sept. 18) reminded a Colorado Democratic state senator that he had gotten a provocative response last year to a letter he had written to the President. State Senator Neal Bishop, knowing full well Harry Truman’s dislike of John L. Lewis, had facetiously suggested putting up Mr. Lewis for Ambassador to Russia. The President’s reply: “I’ve already appointed a good man to that post, and for your information I wouldn’t appoint John L. Lewis dogcatcher . . .”

John L. Lewis was naturally not amused. To his cronies he has often spoken of the way he would outsmart Russian diplomats, if he had the chance. Big John cleared his throat and got off a letter to State Senator Bishop:

“Naturally, the first duty of the Bureau of the Dog, if staffed by the undersigned, would be to . . . impound the sad dogs, the intellectual poodle dogs and the pusillanimous pups which now infest our State Department . . . The President could ill afford to have more brains in the Dog Department than in the Department of State and, from this standpoint, his remarks to you are eminently justified.”