Man of the World

In the U.S. Constitution, the founding fathers summed up Harry Truman's job in four brief paragraphs and summed it up well. But time made its own additions. By accident, default, assumption of powers and slow accretion, the presidency had become a lot more.

Last week Harry Truman, by right of office, was the presiding panjandrum at the nation's annual rite of spring, the Washington Senators' opening ball game. Showing off his ambidexterity, he looped out one ball with his right and another with his left hand and the game was on. He had predicted beforehand that the Senators would beat the Philadelphia Athletics, 5-3, sat with Bess and Margaret --drinking soda pop and munching popcorn--until they did win, 8-7.

Greater. Only the day before, at the White House, Harry Truman had been the diplomatically correct Chief of State, cordially receiving the new credentials of India's distinguished ambassador, Madame Pandit. And by midweek he was the bountiful Great White Father of the American Indians as he signed into law a ten-year, $88 million relief program for poverty-ridden Navajos and Hopis.

Then, without even a change of business suit, the President became the harassed top executive of the world's largest business, on a hunt for new talent at low salaries. To help ferret it out, he set up a high-powered special committee to list qualified prospects for some 200 key Government vacancies each year. When Democratic National Chairman Bill Boyle popped in, Harry Truman--as head chieftain of his party, a position not even dreamed of by the founding fathers--talked over the 65 speeches he would make on his ten-day "nonpolitical" tour beginning May 7. He rounded out the day as the unofficial symbol of U.S. conscience, bought the first buddy poppy from little Nancy Jo Nolan.

Inspector. As he rose before the American Society of Newspaper Editors at lunch next day in Washington's Statler Hotel, he was the spokesman for the free world. "Our task," said he, "is to present the truth to the millions of people who are uninformed or misinformed or unconvinced . . . We must make ourselves known as we really are--not as Communist propaganda pictures us . . ."

Harry Truman, ex-artilleryman and now Commander in Chief of the Army, Navy and Air Force, flew down a day later to inspect the 3rd Infantry at Fort Benning, Ga. (where he fired a 105-mm. howitzer battery). Then he went on to watch Air Force bombing and rocket firing at Florida's Eglin Air Force Base.

He begged off lunch with the airmen on the excuse that he had to go flying again--back to Blair House. The President was also a family man, and he had a date to keep with the First Lady.

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