THE PRESIDENCY: Spare That Applecart

President Harry Truman, a specialist in the short, snappy, off-the-cuff answer to reporters’ questions, was as brief as ever when the U.P.’s veteran Correspondent Merriman (Thank you, Mr. President) Smith first opened fire at the presidential press conference last week. Did he plan to take any steps to restore the money which the Senate (see THE CONGRESS) was busily whacking out of the $8.5 billion he wanted for the job of beefing up Europe? Of course he was going to keep working on it, the President said. He thought, however, that things looked hopeless.

That seemed to sum up the presidential reaction. But when he was asked to elaborate on his personal feelings in the matter, he finally launched into an unusually detailed extension of remarks.

Back in 1947, said Harry Truman earnestly, it was decided that economic recovery was what Europe needed to stave off Red aggression. A plan was worked out, and presented to Congress: the Administration hoped that European recovery could be accomplished for less than $17 billion over a four-year period. The last request brought the total up to about $14½ billion—$2½ billion less than the original estimate, with success in sight. The President thought it a pity to overturn the whole applecart in the interests of misplaced economy. It was not economy and it would never be economy if the European recovery program was ruined just when the whole program was on the verge of success.

With this off his chest, the President lifted his chin toward another questioner and shifted back into his usual verbal quickstep. He announced that he would take another look at the Midwest flood areas on his way home from the Japanese Peace Conference at San Francisco—adding, amid groans from his interrogators (who must follow him), that he proposed to do some of his flood-area inspecting on foot. Then he casually stood off yet another attempt to smoke him out on that most fascinating of subjects: 1952. He was asked if he would comment on a magazine article by ex-White House Assistant Jonathan Daniels, predicting that Harry Truman would run for the presidency and be elected by a minimum of 419 electoral votes.

Mr. Daniels, the President said, was entitled to his opinion. Mr. Truman was not expressing one.

Last week the President also:

¶ Presented Democratic Senators Joseph O’Mahoney and Lester Hunt with something new in the way of White House mementos: brier pipes with bowls carved into likenesses of the presidential countenance—bifocals and all.

¶ Went to Griffith Stadium to watch old-time ball players re-enact the last half-inning of the Washington Senators-New York Giants World Series game of Oct. 10, 1924. The President sat in the same box from which President Calvin Coolidge had watched the Senators win the original contest 4-3* and take their only World Series championship. Truman opened the affair (held before a regular New York Yankees-Washington game) by making a southpaw throw from the stands to 62-year-old Hank Gowdy, catcher for the Giants of 1924.

¶ Received Special Envoy W. Averell Harriman, who got back from Teheran (and side expeditions to Belgrade, London, Paris and Bonn) optimistically hoping that a cooling-off period might lead to resumption of the stalled British-Iranian oil negotiations.

* When the ball, hit by Earl McNeely, hit a pebble near third base, bounced over the head of Giant Third Baseman Freddie Lindstrom to let the winning run score, break a 12th-inning deadlock and decide the series.