THE PRESIDENCY: Power & Peace

The fog had lifted and a sharp autumn wind whistled past the skyscrapers, quickening the pulse of the city. In the Navy Yard in Brooklyn lay the spanking new carrier Franklin D. Roosevelt, ready for a presidential commissioning. Across Manhattan, in the brackish waters of the Hudson, an impressive fraction of the U.S. fleet rode at anchor, ready for a presidential review. There would be a parade for Harry Truman up Fifth Avenue, past the flags and the glittering shop windows. He would make a speech before hundreds of thousands on an open meadow in Central Park.

It was Navy Day for the greatest Navy of the world in the greatest city in the world. The President’s speech had been heralded in advance as the most important of his career. It was time for such a speech: relations between the victorious Allies had steadily worsened.

What did Harry Truman make of his opportunity?

“Father of the Navy.” He arrived from Washington early in the morning. Democrat bigwigs had to hustle to meet him for an 8 o’clock breakfast on the train. The breakfast was good: orange juice and Persian melon, eggs & bacon, toast and coffee. The talk was good: Harry Truman was assured by the politicians that Democrat Bill O’Dwyer would win the New York mayoralty in a landslide.

Eleanor Roosevelt, still in mourning, and Mrs. Woodrow Wilson were at the Navy Yard. Standing bareheaded on the Roosevelt’s flight deck, while others clutched at their hats in the stiff breeze, Harry Truman hailed his predecessor as the “father of the new American Navy.”

“He knows,” said Harry Truman, “as he looks down upon us today that the power of America as expressed in this mighty mass of steel is a power dedicated to peace.” Moments later, 125 of the Roosevelt’s planes (based at Floyd Bennett Field) wheeled overhead in the air age’s standard demonstration of power.

On his way to Central Park, Harry Truman stopped off at City Hall. When an usher told him that the “girls who work in the Mayor’s office” would like to see him, the President replied: “I don’t know why. I’m just the same as everybody else.”

Along Fifth Avenue the crowds were thick—not as thick as they had been for Generals Eisenhower and Wainwright and for Admiral Nimitz, but good, sizable, cheering, confetti-throwing crowds.

On the Meadow. Perhaps a million (or so New York police estimated) had gathered in Central Park to hear the President. They stretched almost across the width of the park. But they were not stirred by the speech. The President said little he had not said before. As usual, he sounded as if he were reciting from a copybook, not too well-written. But this time the copybook had a new and very impressive binding. Against the background of the seapower in the Hudson and the airpower over Manhattan’s skyscrapers, he restated U.S. foreign policy:

¶ The U.S. wants no territory except bases necessary to hold its power advantages.

¶ The U.S. wants cooperation in the Western Hemisphere and no interference from outside.

¶ The U.S. will use its military juggernaut to keep peace and defend itself. (Said Navy Secretary Forrestal: the U.S. will hold its Navy so that others will know that “we have not gone back to bed.”)

¶ The U.S. intends to see to it that all nations have a chance to choose their own governments.

¶The U.S. will not recognize any government “imposed on any nation by the force of any foreign power.”

¶The U.S. proposes the internationalization of rivers and waterways running through or adjacent to more than one country (i.e., the Danube, Dardanelles, etc.)—a proposal which was tabled at the London foreign ministers conference.

¶The U.S. believes that the United Nations Organization can preserve the peace, by force if necessary.

The President recognized that in the atomic bomb the U.S. possesses the greatest power weapon in history. He said that the world must trust the U.S.:

“In our possession of this weapon, as in our possession of other new weapons, there is no threat to any nation. The world, which has seen the United States in two great recent wars, knows that full well. The possession in our hands of this new power of destruction we regard as a sacred trust. Because of our love of peace, the thoughtful people of the world know that that trust will not be violated, that it will be faithfully executed. Indeed the highest hope of the American people is that world cooperation for peace will soon reach such a state of perfection that atomic methods of destruction can be definitely and effectively outlawed forever.”

To Harry Truman, an optimistic man, the greatest danger in world relations right now was “the threat of disillusionment, the danger of an insidious skepticism, a loss of faith in the effectiveness of international cooperation.”

Happy Day. The speech over, Harry Truman went on to the most enjoyable part of the day. He boarded the mighty Missouri in the Hudson, gazed at the spot on the ship’s deck (now marked with a bronze plaque) where the Jap surrender was signed. When he scribbled his name in the ship’s register he exclaimed: “This is the happiest day of my life.”

Then, for an hour and a half, aboard the destroyer Renshaw, he reviewed the fleet. Steaming upstream under gathering clouds he passed the Macon, the Helena, the New York, the Midway, the Enterprise, the Boise—47 ships in all. Each gave him the full 21-gun salute. And overhead thundered more than 1,200 Navy planes in the mightiest demonstration of aerial power New Yorkers had ever seen. Even they were momentarily impressed by the planes.