A Little Butter for His Bread

"I only want," said the king, "a little bit of butter for my bread."

--A. A. Milne

The U.S. muddle over Palestine became more muddled last week. Not even Harry Truman himself knew where he stood. Out of Washington trickled the inside story of how the muddle got that way.

Harry Truman had agreed to the policy switch from partition to trusteeship apparently without realizing what the switch meant. An anguished Clark Clifford had pointed out to him that it was political suicide. But by that time the deed was done.

Harry Truman might well have let it go at that. The idea was getting around that he had patriotically braved political extinction in order to carry out a policy designed to bolster the military position of the U.S. But Harry Truman did not want to be extinguished. He appealed to George Marshall and the State Department to help him out. He wanted another statement.

How to Make Statements. He called a White House meeting, summoning Secretary Marshall; Loy Henderson, the State Department's Middle East expert; and David K. Niles, the President's special adviser on Palestine. But the meeting exploded into violent argument. Niles is pro-partition. Henderson is anti-partition. Mr. Truman broke it up by walking out, bitterly declaiming: "This gets us nowhere. All I want is a statement I can read tomorrow at my press conference."

So that night until 3 a.m., State Department officials sweated out a statement for him.

How to Fill Vacuums. Seven and a half hours later, bright as a dollar, Harry Truman faced his press conference. On his desk were some typed pages which he picked up, saying briskly that he had a short statement to make.

"The United States," he read, "has proposed a temporary United Nations trusteeship for Palestine. . . . Trusteeship is not proposed as a substitute for the partition plan but as an effort to fill the vacuum soon to be created by the termination of the [British] mandate, on May 15. ... If we are to avert tragedy in Palestine, an immediate truce must be reached between the Arabs and Jews. . . . With such a truce and such a trusteeship, a peaceful settlement is yet possible."

Then the questioning began. Would the U.S. send troops to Palestine? Not necessarily, said the President. Who would be the trustee? The United Nations, he said. Did the President still favor immigration into Palestine? His position had not changed (he is for immigration). Was he still in favor of partition? That, exclaimed Harry Truman happily, was just what he was trying to say.

Press Aide Charlie Ross watched with his sad hound-dog expression. Clark Clifford, preoccupied, scratched his chin. The conference ended.

Now no one in the world could be expected to know where the U.S. stood on Palestine. Harry Truman's comic-opera performance had done little credit to the greatest power in the world.

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