Double Eagle

With the momentous decision on Greece settled at the top level (see The Nation), Harry Truman took off on a long-planned trip. Once before he had been in Mexico City, as a U.S. Senator in 1939. This week as the Sacred Cow dipped down over the ancient Aztec capital he came as the first U.S. President the city had ever seen.

As the presidential plane rolled to a stop in the bright morning sunlight, the carefully rehearsed formalities began. President Truman hopped out brisk & cheerful, despite his early (2:59 a.m.) takeoff, to meet U.S. Ambassador Walter Thurston and his aides, drawn up on the cement apron. At the same moment Mexico's President Miguel Aleman started down a specially built staircase from the observation platform (which had been newly decorated with brown rugs, leather office furniture, gleaming brass spittoons). The 21-gun salute due a chief of state boomed out; the U.S. and Mexican anthems sounded.

At the foot of the stairs the two Presidents met and embraced. Then the presidential parties moved off through the airport building, across the street to the stage of the Great Tribunal, taking due notice on the way of the decorations surmounting its towers: U.S. and Mexican eagles.

Dignity of Man. Before a floral blanket of U.S. and Mexican flags, woven the night before by Xochimilco Indians, there was another exchange of greetings. Harry Truman made a little speech accepting an inscribed gold medal, a scroll, and honorary citizenship in Mexico City.

Afterwards, behind a Military Academy cavalry squadron, the two Presidents rode between rows of organ cacti and Mexican foot troops over the newly paved city streets to the great, tomblike U.S. Embassy.

At 5:30 the round of ceremony began again. President Truman drove over to the National Palace for a formal welcome by President Aleman. At 7:30 he was back for a state dinner in the Comedor under the great crystal candelabra installed by Mexico's ill-fated Maximilian and Carlotta.

His official address was not a major speech. But it included much of what Harry Truman feels about the future of international relations.

He was not so concerned, he said optimistically, with the "fundamental differences in political philosophies" which separate nations as with the "common beliefs" which unite them. In the inter-American system of mutual cooperation and non-intervention he saw the greatest product of those common beliefs.

They were rooted, he thought, in a common trust in democracy and the brotherhood of man. Said he: "We believe in the dignity of the individual. We believe that the function of the state is to preserve and promote human rights and fundamental freedoms. We believe that the state exists for the benefit of man, not that man exists for the benefit of the state. . . . We believe that each individual must have as much liberty for the conduct of his life as is compatible with the rights of others."

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