Good for the Soul

From the moment he rode into Little Rock and joined the boys, Harry Truman was at his handshaking, backslapping best. If there was anything he liked as much as winning elections and playing poker, this was it--the annual reunion of the 35th Division and its famous offspring, Captain Harry's hell-raising Battery D, 129th Field Artillery, A.E.F.

At a ball in his honor, the President chatted with the guests (who paid $10 a head), but declined to test the dance floor. "I'm a Baptist, you know," Harry Truman explained, "but not a lightfoot one, so I didn't learn to dance." Forty minutes later, the President was ready to leave; the next day would be a big one. ". . . Come out to the stadium tomorrow," Baptist Truman suggested, "and I'll tell you something good for your souls."

Wait Till Next Time. The President was up at 6, and hungry as a mountain lion by the time the paunchy veterans of old "Dizzy D" Battery whooped into a Marion Hotel dining room for their annual breakfast--home-grown peaches in thick cream, hickory-smoked country ham with "redeye" gravy, hominy grits, bacon & eggs and hot biscuits. As usual, it was a time for loud laughing and hearty reminiscences of some of the boys who were gone. Captain Harry did some reminiscing himself: Remember poor old Sandifer? He came through many a prizefight on cigarettes and a bottle of whisky, recalled the President, but "a fellow in Kansas City . . . dropped a brick on him and killed him." Then he solemnly reminded his boys that they and he must be careful not to get the big head: "Due to the fact that through luck and the good Lord you happen to have a Chief Executive of the United States, you mustn't . . . feel that you are better than the other people who served and fought for the country."

Harry Truman thanked the people who arranged the breakfast for placing "Steamboat" Johnson behind a pillar "where he couldn't see me." From behind the pillar Steamboat--Interstate Commerce Commissioner J. Monroe Johnson, an honorary member of Battery D--piped up: "If you think we did something for you in Washington last time [at the Battery D Inauguration-Day breakfast], just wait until the next time Captain Harry is President and see what we can do." Startled, Harry Truman laughed. "All those newsmen," he cautioned, "will think it's a plant."

Traffic on Main Street. The breakfast ended in time for Captain Harry and the boys to freshen up for the big 35th Division parade. Promptly at 10 o'clock the President, gleaming in a creamy summer suit and a white cowboy hat, arrived at Twelfth and Main Streets and gave the order, "Let's go." Down Main Street they trudged and swayed, the President in the lead with shirtsleeved Secretary of Defense Louis Johnson (also an honorary Battery D man) on his right, and smiling Democratic Governor Sid McMath, a World War II veteran, on his left. Keg-shaped Frank Spina, the Battery D barber who still cuts President Truman's hair whenever the President visits Kansas City, marched in the front rank under the Dizzy D's red silk guidon. Confetti, torn telephone books and strips of newspaper, and the cheers of 75,000 people showered down on Captain Harry as he made the 13-block line of march.

"A Bundle from Heaven." By afternoon, the sun was hot enough to scorch the bristles off a razorback hog, but 10,000 filed into Little Rock's Memorial Stadium to hear the President speak. It was the moment Mayor Sam Wassell, the windmill orator of Little Rock, had been waiting for. Into the microphones he brayed the story of Harry Truman, from "a bundle from heaven" dropped into the Ozarks, to his present niche, "almost at the very pinnacle of undying fame."

The President's own speech was not the world-shaker the White House indicated it might be, but it was a simple and earnest restatement of the Administration's foreign policy. "A slash in the funds available for European recovery at this time," said Mr. Truman, "would be the worst kind of false economy ... a great gain for communism." There are three prerequisites to lasting peace, he declared:

"First, this nation must be strong and prosperous. Second, other nations devoted to the cause of peace and freedom must also be strong and prosperous. Third, there must be an international structure capable of adjusting international differences and maintaining peace . . . The goal we seek is a great one, and worth the price."

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