National Affairs: Chill in Chicago

President Truman had something positive to say, and he said it in the most forceful language he has yet used in a foreign-policy pronouncement. As in New York City on Navy Day (TIME, Nov 5), he spoke from under a sounding board of military power: Chicago’s Army Day celebration.

The Army had arranged a big show. Chicago turned out, some 1,000,000 strong, on a cold and windy morning. They gathered along streets of the Loop to watch the President’s party drive to Michigan Boulevard’s Blackstone Hotel. There were some cheers as smiling Harry Truman’s car passed. For the car behind his, carrying General Dwight Eisenhower, Admiral William D. Leahy and Treasury Secretary Fred Vinson, there were prolonged huzzahs.

Might on Parade. At the Blackstone the President told about 100 high school reporters that he favored giving voting rights to 18-year-olds. He said that youth, by its war services, had proved its ability to handle the highest duties of citizenship.

Then, for two hours and 45 minutes the President, his wife and daughter stood stiffly in the cold as tanks, armored cars, sleek green guns and some 14,000 soldiers passed his reviewing stand on Michigan Boulevard.

After a warming lunch (thick tenderloin steaks) and acceptance of a medal from Chicago’s Mayor Kelly,* the President rode in an open car, its safety glass raised to full height, to Soldier Field. There, as his car edged around the arena, he returned beaming smiles for the cheers. But as he alighted at the north end of the amphitheater, somebody threw a tomato at the President of the U.S. If Harry Truman noticed it as it squashed on the cinder track he gave no sign.

Might of Peace. But he could hardly help noticing the crowd’s behavior. Some 65,000 people were in the windswept stadium (capacity 116,308) as the President arrived. Many had waited three or four hours; the temperature was 46°. The crowd gave Eisenhower its biggest cheer of the day, listened attentively to his speech (“We must, until perpetual peace is assured, maintain and constantly improve the perishable machines of our security”).

By the time the President was introduced, the crowd had begun to thin out. The President’s high, flat voice was strong as he emphasized his theme: “We are determined to remain strong . . . to exercise [our] leadership on behalf of a world of peace. . . .” Slowly he measured off the three points on which he said U.S. power for peace depends: 1) unification of the armed services; 2) temporary extension of Selective Service; 3) universal military training. “Now, even in an election year like this, nobody should play politics with the national safety.” There was no audible response.

The President went on to his major pronouncement: “The immediate goal of our foreign policy is to support the United Nations to the utmost.” There was a feeble cheer, a few seconds of applause for this implicit answer to Winston Churchill’s call for an Anglo-American fraternity of interests against Russia. The U.S. pledges its power behind the United Nations’ “right to insist that the sovereignty and integrity of the Near and Middle East must not be threatened by coercion or penetration.” No response from the crowd.

Then Harry Truman gave up. He dropped his careful enunciating and emphasizing, hurried through the remaining 733 words of his speech, slurred over many of them. When he finished there was only a polite cheer; more than a third of the crowd had already left.

Back at the train, Harry Truman did not seem to be disheartened. He and Ike Eisenhower clambered into the cab of the huge new superpowered locomotive that was to zip them eastward. The President donned the engineer’s white gloves, got a lesson in how to start and stop the giant.

* Foot-in-mouth Boss Kelly was in good form, said that the medals were “something by which they will remember Chicago by.” He introduced Fred Vinson as “Secretary of the Treasurer,” proudly announced that “this is the first time four members of the Cabinet have come to one city just for patriotic purposes.”