Short Talk

On his 100th day as U.S. President, Harry Truman emerged from the secrecy-fenced Potsdam compound of the Big Three meeting (see INTERNATIONAL). He had a ceremonial job to do in Berlin, and he evidently relished doing it. Along with War Secretary Stimson and Generals Eisenhower, Bradley, Patton and Clay, he went to witness the raising of the official U.S. victory flag* over the headquarters of the U.S. Group Control Council.

Brown-suited Harry Truman stood in the cobblestoned court of what had been a German Air Force headquarters, saw the flag break out at the top of the staff, then stepped forward to make an extemporaneous speech. It was over in less than two minutes, but it made the biggest international news of the week. Said plain Harry Truman in plain words:

"Let us not forget that we are fighting for peace and for the welfare of mankind. We are not fighting for conquest. There is not one piece of territory or one thing of a monetary nature that we want out of this war. We want peace and prosperity for the world as a whole."

Qualify? The effect of his speech in the U.S. was immediate. Many a citizen, many an Army & Navy man, many a Senator shivered at first, wished that the President had adorned his plain "not one piece of territory" with at least a qualified exclusion of Pacific bases won at a high cost in U.S. lives.

The Senators hoped that Mr. Truman had merely been talking about Europe. Few seriously believed that he had intended to cut across Army & Navy policy on strategic Pacific bases.

Said New Mexico's Senator Carl Hatch, a member of the Foreign Relations Committee : "I think the President was speaking of not retaining territory for selfish gain. Any Pacific area we keep will be for defense purposes only and is likely to be almost entirely worthless for any other purpose."

But Mr. Truman's short sentence brought from Georgia's Senator Walter F. George, also on the Foreign Relations Committee, a statement that U.S. control of some Pacific areas should not be hampered even by trusteeships.

Louisiana's Senator Allen Ellender went further; he wanted control also of "some of the military bases we have built in other parts of the world." The President, said he, was "too liberal."

In Berlin, those close to Mr. Truman saw no reason for the Senators to be so sensitive. They insisted that the President had simply underlined U.S. intentions to keep the general welfare of all peoples as an objective of peace. But the speech might become a debating ground as the Senate takes up the Charter this week.

Working on the Railroads. In Potsdam the President had kept a close eye on the Pacific war reports and a guiding finger on domestic matters. During the week he: P:Appointed St. Louis Banker John W. Snyder to be War Mobilization and Reconversion Director (see below). P: Asked Congress to abolish the three-man Surplus Property Board, put the job under one man (presumably Businessman William Stuart Symington III of St. Louis, his appointed chairman). P: Ordered the Petroleum Administration to take over and operate the strike-threatened (C.I.O.) butadiene plant of Sinclair Rubber Inc. at Houston. P:Asked "any patriotic American" who could to go to work on the western railroads, to help move men and supplies Pacificward (see BUSINESS).

-It is the flag which was on the Capitol mast on Dec. 7, 1941, has since been raised at Casablanca, Algiers and Rome.

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.