Mr. Truman Goes Home

Harry Truman had planned an unhurried week, devoted to studying Congress' last minute legislation. There was one break in his schedule. He went up to Capitol Hill for an informal buffet luncheon in the office of Les Biffle, director of the Senate's Democratic Policy Committee.

The President had put Biffle up to it. A number of Harry Truman's old friends from his Senate days were there. While they ate Arkansas ham, turkey, potato salad and cake adorned with small flags of Missouri and the U.S., the Senators kidded Harry Truman about his not being able to join them when they returned to the chamber for the afternoon's debates. Les Biffle suggested: Why didn't the President walk in and take his old seat? Harry Truman thought it was a fine idea.

Secret Service men were hastily stationed in the tourist-packed gallery. The President, unannounced, stepped into the chamber.* Grinning like a schoolboy about to receive his lettered sweater, he walked to his old desk. Senators and visitors gaped, then applauded.

The rule that only Senators may speak to the Senate was set aside. President pro tem Arthur Vandenberg recognized "the ex-Senator from Missouri for five minutes." Said Harry Truman: "I sometimes get homesick for this seat. I spent what I think were the best ten years of my life in the Senate." It was a pleasant day.

Then that night he got a telephone call from Missouri.

A Matter of Days. It was the President's physician, Brigadier General Wallace Graham, calling from Grandview. Martha Truman's condition had worsened. The President ordered his airplane to stand by.

The week was now filled with urgency. For the next two days Harry Truman stuck close to his desk. He held a short press conference. Bills piled up. By Saturday morning, Congress had sent him 79 and he had signed 58 of them.

His signature on one bill stripped him of some 175 wartime powers. The bill put a deadline on many veterans' benefits (unemployment pay for veterans now out of the services will end July 25, 1949). It also repealed (as of Jan. 25, 1948) the wartime suspension of antitrust prosecutions, ended such war measures as employment of $1 -a -year men.

He signed the politically loaded bill permitting World War II veterans to cash their terminal-leave bonds ($2 billion) any time after September1 (TIME, July 14), but with a message urging veterans not to cash them unless it was "absolutely necessary." On Saturday morning his sister called from Grandview.

A Matter of an Hour. Martha Truman might not live through the day. His plane was made ready to take off. There was one delay. He wanted to sign the Army-Navy-Air Forces unification bill so that, before Congress recessed, he could nominate Navy Secretary James V. Forrestal to be the first Secretary of Defense. The bill was still on the Hill, awaiting congressional signatures. The President put off his departure an hour.

Harry Truman was tight-lipped as he waited beside the Sacred Cow. Finally the bill was brought to him. A few minutes later his plane was aloft. The White House announced Forrestal's nomination, which the Senate quickly approved.

The Sacred Cow was over Ohio, the President was dozing on a cot in his stateroom, when the radio message came. Martha Truman had died. When he had read the message, the President said: "Well, now she won't have to suffer any more." Dry-eyed and silent, he turned to gaze for a long time at the checkerboard countryside below.

*The New York Post's Columnist F.P.A. thought he saw an omen in Harry Truman's nostalgia for the Senate. "Lord!" wrote Adams. "After J. Q. Adams had been President he became a representative from Massachusetts." For omen-sighters there was a better precedent. Like Harry Truman, Andrew Johnson was a Senator before death made him President; six years after he left the White House he was again elected a Senator (from Tennessee).

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