Drifting & Dreaming

Candidate Harry Truman put in a busy week, mapping his strategy. If he was to have a chance to win, his strategists decided, heroic measures were necessary. What they planned was perhaps the most strenuous campaign ever waged by an incumbent President. Cheered by a Gallup poll showing that the Dixiecrats commanded only 14% of Southern votes, Truman boldly scheduled an invasion of the South for mid-September. This would be followed by swings through New England, then the Pacific Coast and Southwest, lastly through the Midwest.

At his news conference, the President seemed in quiet good humor. "What do you think of Governor Dewey personally?'' blurted a newsman. He liked him personally, Truman replied promptly. What did he think about Dewey's proposal--made to a delegation of Italian-Americans--that Italy's former African colonies be returned to Italian administration under a U.N. trusteeship? Truman's voice was mild but edged. Under the Italian peace treaty, he said, the disposition of these colonies is under consideration by the Big Four powers. If they do not reach an agreement, the problem will go to the U.N. Assembly. The question cannot very well be handled politically in the U.S., he said.

In New York, Dewey's Secretary Paul Lockwood brusquely retorted that the governor felt "a solemn obligation to lay fully and frankly before the American people his views on world affairs . . ."

At week's end, the President shucked off visitors and boarded his yacht, the Williamsburg for a leisurely nine-day cruise in Chesapeake and Delaware Bays. Truman finds in the Williamsburg one of the few places on earth where he can relax with his friends in privacy. If Harry Truman is sent back to Missouri next January, undoubtedly the thing he will miss most will be the yacht.

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