Back to Work

Like millions of other Americans, President Truman came back from vacation this week and buckled down to work. His planless 18-day vacation on the Atlantic had been a success: he was deeply tanned, rested, feeling fine.

Like millions of other Americans, he had suffered as he would not have done at home. His return voyage in rough weather got him down with seasickness. Also, for the sake of his party of friends, he had put up with something for which he had little enthusiasm--fishing. He caught a few bonitos, red hind and barberfish (red with blue dots), but he made his political advisers wince by frankly saying that he was no devotee of rod & reel.

Stripped of his pink sport shirt and shaded by a white pith helmet, he nevertheless found fishing a good way to sit and loaf. Loafing was his chief objective and he got a lot of it done. He kept his weight level by frequent swims off the fantail of his yacht Williamsburg (he uses a side stroke to keep his glasses dry). And he managed to do almost no work. He signed a few documents, put off until this week everything that required anything more than his signature.

For one of the few times in his presidency, there was nothing on Harry Truman's desk that required urgent action. His chief unfinished business--other than backing up Jimmy Byrnes at Paris--was filling some top Administration vacancies. He had at least one good candidate around: Wisconsin's able, lameduck Senator Robert M. La Follette. Dopesters had Bob La Follette taking over the chairmanship of the TVA, thus releasing David E. Lilienthal to become chairman of the new Atomic Energy Commission.

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