National Affairs: Pouring It Back

Harry Truman’s attempt to swing Jewish and Catholic votes against Dwight Eisenhower may have gone too far, even for roughhouse U.S. politics.

Quick to voice shock over the President’s implication that Ike condoned an anti-Semitic and anti-Catholic immigration policy (see above) was one of U.S. Jewry’s leaders, Rabbi Abba Hillel Silver of Cleveland. Former president of the Zionist Organization of America, Dr. Silver pointedly called on Eisenhower in New York, then issued a statement:

“Much is permitted in a campaign, but the attempt by implication to identify a man like General Eisenhower—whose humanity and broad tolerance are known all over the world—with anti-Semitism and anti-Catholicism is just not permissible even in the heat of a campaign.

“It is clear that General Eisenhower is opposed to the McCarran bill. Incidentally, the McCarran bill was fathered by the Democrats, and both Democrats and Republicans were culpable for keeping this un-American bill on the books. General Eisenhower would like to eliminate from the bill unusual preferences for Nordics or any other racial preference.”

Washington Publisher Eugene Meyer (the Washington Post) poured it back on Truman for “slanderous . . . outrageous . . . ridiculous” charges. Bernard Baruch, Democratic elder statesman, allowed the release of a letter he had written to Ike last August: “Since I have known you as a major, I have grown to respect and admire your character, ability, gentleness but firmness and, above all, the high purposes that have motivated you in all circumstances. Your abhorrence of cant, hypocrisy, intolerance in all fields of human relations have brought affection with respect and admiration.”

The Republican top brass hit hard at the Truman tactics. Said South Dakota’s Senator Karl E. Mundt: “Never has a retiring President campaigned in this manner. He is making it difficult for any decent Americans to vote Democratic in 1952.” Then, in words addressed especially to Catholics and Jews, Mundt added: “Despite the fact that over a hundred leading national organizations, including the National Catholic Welfare Council, endorsed the McCarran-Walter Immigration Act, Mr. Truman blandly cries it is ‘anti-Catholic.’ The man who smashed the greatest enemy of the Jews in modern times, Adolf Hitler, who led Jewish fighting men in war and who, on every occasion, has shown friendship for the Jews, is labeled as ‘anti-Jewish’ . . .”

The New York World-Telegram and Sun recalled that the night before Truman’s charge was read, New York’s Francis Cardinal Spellman had introduced Eisenhower at the annual Al Smith dinner with these words: “The man of our generation to whom America entrusted the guardianship of its most precious possession—our liberties and our youth; a man known and respected throughout the country and throughout the world, a general who has a place among the alltime great men in American history.”

The reaction against Truman’s attempted character-assassination was widespread, but many Stevenson-lovers who express horror at Joe McCarthy were delighted by Truman’s rabble-rousing.