Quiet Week

The shrill pitch of abuse heaped upon the President continued to echo. So mild a man as Harry Truman might well wonder at the temper of his countrymen.

The real anger had gone out of the debate over meat, but the President still drew scorn from every quarter. Republican politicians pointed to the confusion in the White House. Fiorello LaGuardia, speechmaking in Oklahoma City, called the President the "Roy Riegels* of American politics." Pint-sized Billy Rose, showman turned columnist, suggested W. C. Fields as presidential timber: "If we're going to have a comedian in the White House, let's have a good one." In Wash ington's Smithsonian Institution, a mysterious scratch disfigured the face of the Chief Executive's portrait.

Harry Truman decided on a quiet week ; he ducked his weekly press grilling, with the excuse that he had nothing special to announce. Newspaper editorials pointed out that omission might also be a sin. When the President failed to meet returning Secretary of State Jimmy Byrnes at the capital airport, Washington buzzed furiously once again. Scolded N.Y. Timesman Arthur Krock: "Mr. Truman and his staff should have realized ... that his absence . . . would set up a whispering gallery." But even the hard-hearted Krock was moved to concede grudgingly that "the President is a prisoner of his office . . . there is in him no touch of malicious subtlety."

Cutaway. The conspiracy of fate seemed to dog the President on the most routine of matters. Shortly before the traditional White House call last week by the Justices of the Supreme Court, Harry Truman was listening to the broadcast of the deciding World Series game. Someone called attention to his business suit, and remarked that the Justices would soon arrive, in formal attire. Harry Truman dashed upstairs to change into striped trousers and a cutaway coat. But at the reception, the only person in full formal dress was Harry Truman. (Justice Jackson had put on striped trousers, but compromised with a black sack coat.)

Otherwise the President survived the week without further embarrassment. After Secretary of State Byrnes had filled him in on the Paris Conference, the President blocked out his speech for opening the U.N. General Assembly in New York. Between routine appointments Harry Truman posed for a new portrait by British Artist Frank 0. Salisbury, commissioned by former Ambassador to Russia Joseph E. Davies as a gift to Mrs. Truman.

Last week the President also: P: Yielded to rampaging Congressional pork-barrelers (TIME, Sept. 30) and the election tides by approving the expenditure for public works and flood control of $635 million frozen last August by a White House economy order.

P: Created a twelve-man Presidential Research Board, headed by OWMR Director John R. Steelman, to spur peacetime scientific development.

P: Abolished the Office of Alien Property Custodian and transferred its powers to the Department cf Justice.

* University of California football player who lost the 1929 Rose Bowl game by running 64 yards the wrong way with a Georgia Tech fumble.

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