Somewhat Hipped

"I have one subject, on which I am somewhat hipped," Harry Truman Confided to 50 members of the Associated Church Press. "And that is ... to see that those forces in the world that believe in honor and ethics, and uprightness, and the keeping of agreements are in control of the world when we are finished."

At his weekly press conference next day, newsmen were hipped on somewhat the same subject. The President's grin vanished with the first searing question. "I wonder," said a reporter, "whether you'd care to comment on the testimony by former Mayor O'Dwyer that he appointed to office friends and relatives of gangsters?" The President said coldly that he had no comment. "Is any change contemplated in his status as ambassador?" Harry Truman shot back a crackling no.

Then reporters wanted to know about Presidential Assistant Donald Dawson, whose honor, ethics and uprightness had been questioned in the RFC scandal, and who had so far avoided the chance to straighten it all out before the investigating Fulbright subcommittee. Had the President asked Dawson to go clear himself? That, thought the President, .was the committee's business not his. "You don't intend to fire Mr. Dawson from the White House?" No, said Harry Truman curtly, gesturing at Dawson sitting three feet behind him. Dawson was right there, wasn't he? That was all there was to it.

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