THE PRESIDENCY: Mr. Truman & the Shahinshah

Baptist Harry Truman, who is justly proud of his Bible knowledge, had a little confession to make. Reaching into his memory for a quotation from Daniel last week, he had come out with: “The laws of the Medes and Persians, they are not altered.” What he should have said, he explained apologetically at his press conference next day, was “which altereth not.” But however his memory had served him, no one could mistake the meaning of the President’s welcoming toast to his guest, the Shahinshah of Iran, first Oriental monarch to make a state visit to the U.S. since the war.

“Daniel meant not that the laws were unalterable,” said the President, “but that the Medes and the Persians believed in keeping their contracts. We have been dealing with a great power that does not believe in keeping its contracts. Iran believes in keeping its contracts. The United States believes in keeping its contracts.”

The President could hardly have found more encouraging words for an ally who, perching perilously on Russia’s border, supplies oil to the West and depends on military aid from the U.S. If the warmth of Harry Truman’s welcome was any indication, slim, soft-spoken young (30) Mohamed Reza Shah Pahlevi also seemed in a good way of getting the economic aid he was frankly looking for, to help finance Iran’s ambitious seven-year plan for modernizing the ancient land of the Persians (TIME, Oct. 24).

Keys to the City. From the moment the presidential Independence touched down at the National Airport, having brought the Shah from Teheran, the President spared no pains to entertain his guest. Harry Truman greeted the young Shah heartily, bundled him off to review an honor guard, and steered him through the gauntlet of White House photographers. Together they drove in an open limousine through flag-draped streets to present the Shah with a six-inch key to the nation’s capital. At a formal state banquet in the Carlton Hotel that night, Harry Truman offered him the keys to the nation as well, along with a little homily on the uses of democracy:

“You are at liberty to talk with anyone you please. You are at liberty to see anything you want to see. You will not be hampered by a police guard unless you want it. And you will have to ask for it if you do want it.” Replied the Shah with obvious warmth and pleasure: “Tonight, Mr. President, as your guest at Blair House, I know I shall sleep well and dream true, for I shall be in the house of my friends.”

Next morning, Harry Truman waited around to see if the Shah would join him in his morning constitutional. The Shah was not used to the President’s early hours, but he was up in time to accept a specially built 30-06 hunting rifle with a silver butt-plate engraved: “From the President to the Shahinshah of Iran.” Said the President : “A very earnest and sincere young man.”

$ 10 a Pound. The rest of Washington apparently agreed. While the President closeted himself in the White House for a conference with State Department officials on the Far East, the Shah was whirled off through a busy schedule of sightseeing, wreath-laying and conferences at Mount Vernon, Annapolis and the Pentagon, a formal dinner with Secretary of Slate Dean Acheson. At a luncheon given by the Overseas Writers, the Shah, who learned English in school in Switzerland, struck just the right note by announcing: “You are all, I am told, what is called ‘working’ newspapermen. I work, too. I can be described, I hope, as a ‘working” monarch.”

The Shah repaid President Truman’s hospitality with a lavish dinner for 800 in the main’ ballroom of the Shoreham-Hotel; the Iranian Embassy was too small to hold the dinner there. Said he: “The President is one of the finest men I ever met.”

After the Shah had set off for a ceremonial visit to Manhattan and a month’s visit around the U.S., Harry Truman settled down to routine. A little fat from his long desk-bound summer, he had been roped into a reducing contest with Brigadier General Wallace Graham, the White House physician, and his portly military aide, Major General Harry Vaughan. The President still had three pounds to lose by Thanksgiving Day (to 175). Then, after accounts were settled (at $10 for every overweight pound), he would head for three weeks at Key West and his first real vacation since last March.