Blow Ye Winds, Heigh-O

After a few years in Washington, most politicians can detect the faint hiss of escaping gossip the way bird dogs can hear whistles pitched too high for the human ear. Last week, as Harry Truman set out on his 17-day tour of the West, hundreds of the initiated swore they could hear tongues wagging across the capital in salvos like a 21-gun salute. The reason: three days before starting out, the President had notified Democratic National Committee Chairman J. Howard McGrath (who had planned the trip) that he and his professional politicos could not come along.

Washington speculation was based on three main theories: 1) that McGrath was left behind to justify charging the trip to the President's travel allowance, 2) that McGrath had roused the President's ire by intimating that he needed a political wet nurse, and 3) that the White House secretariat, which considers the National Committee a bunch of grubbing ward heelers, had persuaded the President to dump them. But whatever theory was correct, Republicans were surer than ever that the Democratic Party was falling apart.

No Wind that Blew . . . The President, however, acted exactly as if he were setting out on a triumph. "If I felt any better," he told reporters at Washington's Union Station, "I couldn't stand it." He seemed to be certain that he was embarking on a sort of political Sheridan's Ride, and that his straggling troops would wheel, cheer, and rally behind him as he crossed the continent. As he began making the first of many off-the-cuff, rear-platform speeches, he announced again and again and again, that he was certain to be reelected.

The early response was fairly encouraging. A thousand people gathered near the tracks to hear him at Crestline, Ohio; at Fort Wayne, Ind., 3,000 turned out. He was respectfully received--although at Gary, Ind., a woman in a floppy hat shouted: "Hello,. Harry. I'm from Independence. I knowed you when you worked for Pendergast." In Chicago, 100,000 lined the streets to watch him ride from the train to the Palmer House. But what the political doctors had ordered was a roaring ovation--and Harry Truman got only a spattering of hand-claps.

At a posh dinner at the Palmer House --attended by 40 Chicago bigwigs, including the Chicago Tribune's Colonel Robert R. McCormick--the President spoke with unassuming trumanity: "In earlier years I came to Chicago on shopping trips with Mrs. Truman," he said. "I enjoyed looking in the windows. No one paid any attention to me then. I suppose a lot of people wish I was looking in windows again. But they won't get their way because a year from today I'm going to be right back in the same trouble I'm in now."

Dismayed Her Crew . . . That night at Chicago Stadium he spoke before 20,000 Swedish-Americans who were celebrating the 100th anniversary of Swedish immigration to the Midwest. He pulled out that surefire issue--Communism--and used it as a sort of moral prop for his civil-liberties program, for slum clearance, old-age pensions, and higher minimum wages. The audience was friendly but calm.

Next day, still brisk and beaming, he was in Omaha, where the 35th Division (in which he served as a captain during World War I) held its annual parade. The President marched for eight blocks with his buddies of Battery D, 129th Field Artillery; he smiled, waved his hat and seemed to enjoy himself immensely.

Or Troubled . . . That night he had an evening of pure horror. When he walked out on the stage of Omaha's big Ak-Sar-Ben Coliseum, 8,000 empty seats yawned before him. Although his trip had been well advertised, and admission was free, he had drawn an audience of only 2,000. He made a fighting challenge to G.O.P. candidates to get Congress busy on a farm program. But one of his aides reported: "We had to chop a hole in the ice to get him out."

To the 65 newsmen on the train it seemed like a wake. Not so to the President. Said he: "I don't depress."

But as his train pulled out, Nebraska's Democratic state chairman, William Ritchie, blew up with a loud bang, angrily announced that he would walk out on Truman at the Philadelphia convention. Said Ritchie: "I'm convinced that he cannot be elected. He has muffed the ball badly. He seems to prefer his so-called buddies to the persons who have done the work and put up the money for the party."

The Captain's Mind. The state chairman complained that Omaha Democrats were "given the bums' rush" by members of the 35th Division Association before and during the President's visit. "Most of those in charge of arrangements were Republicans. We were hustled into a reception line and pushed through like a bunch of cattle being rushed to the slaughter pen. We had no chance to talk to Truman at all."

The sting, if not the bruising implication of the Omaha fiasco, was eased as Truman headed on to the Pacific Coast. The President, a man who delights in the small, homy prerogatives of his office, was presented with a beautiful pair of spurs at Grand Island, Neb., and a pair of boots at Kearney, where he left the train to attend church services. He got a ten-gallon hat in Cheyenne, Wyo. Thus equipped, he added a jocular line to his rear-platform speech: "I can really take Congress for a ride now," he said.

His folksy friendliness was reciprocated by the little crowds along the way. But he went on attracting criticism like a magnet. When he got to Pocatello, Ida., the Pocatello Post asked why he had not met Idaho convention delegates during his stop at Sun Valley. Then it called the pitch on his western trip: "It's politics, but not smart politics."

As first reports of the trip came back to Washington, the town echoed to a new rumor--that Harry Truman would withdraw from the presidential race if his Western tour proved disappointing. The unanswered question: "If not Truman, who?" rose to plague Democrats more unanswerably than ever. Last week Pathfinder magazine reported that General Ike Eisenhower, who was still the people's choice (see Political Notes), had flatly stated that he is a Republican and would support the G.O.P. nominee. And in a letter to a St. Louis Post-Dispatch editorial writer, Supreme Court Justice William O. Douglas announced that he was not a candidate.

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