One Washington event I made sure I didn’t miss was the March visit of Mr. and Mrs. Churchill. Dad gave a dinner for them in the dining room of Lee House, which is the twin next-door neighbor of Blair House. Churchill was in marvelous spirits. The Labour government was steadily losing popularity in England, and he told Dad he was planning to stand for reelection as prime minister and was sure he would win.
The small size of Blair House, as I have said, made entertaining doubly difficult. Large dinners had to be given at the Carlton Hotel. At official small dinners, we usually had cocktails in Blair House, then crossed to Lee House for dinner. When I gave a dinner, the White House workmen stripped Blair House of carpets, moved all the furniture, and polished the floor for dancing, while we dined in Lee House. At dawn the next day, Blair House was put together again.
When my friend Jane Watson, the daughter of Thomas J. Watson of IBM, became engaged and asked me to be a bridesmaid, I gave a small dinner at Blair House for her. We got talking about the problem of people stealing spoons and knives from the White House. Tom Watson, Jr., thought this was absolutely terrible, and he held forth for several minutes on the subject with surprising vehemence. Later that night while Tom and I were dancing, I slipped a spoon into his pocket. It was fiendish of me but great fun for the rest of us. Poor Tom was mortified when he discovered the stolen goods the next day. Only when I confessed that I was the practical joker did he calm down.
Throughout 1949, I had to cope with a rash of engagement rumors. They amused Dad, but most of the time they annoyed me. I felt sorry for the various male friends with whom I was being linked - always without a shred of truth. Moreover, it cut down on my available escort supply. Once someone was touted as my intended, he got very leery about taking me out thereafter.
My double life and my ferocious practice schedule wore me down, and a heavy cold, which I tried to ignore, developed into bronchitis. Dad put me to bed at Blair House and kept me there until I got in a very rebellious mood and decided to change my hair style. I cut my hair off until it was almost a shingle. Dad was horrified by the result, but I liked it. The poor man didn’t know what to do. It wasn’t like his awful bow ties, which we could torment him into changing. Every time he looked at me, he had a funereal expression on his face, as if I had contracted a fatal illness, or something.
He got a little revenge by suggesting I arise at dawn and take a morning walk with him. I was away so much, he protested, he hadn’t really talked with me for months. What better place for a father-daughter chat than a brisk dawn stroll? I had my doubts, but I was feeling a little guilty about being away, and I acquiesced. The scenario on the following morning went something like this.
The President sets out from White House at his usual 120 strides a minute. He pauses at the corner to find out why daughter is thirty feet behind him. “Come on, Margie,” he says, “what’s holding you up?”
“Where’s the fire?” asks his gasping daughter.
Two more blocks at 120 paces per minute and the President pauses again. His daughter is now sixty feet behind him. “What’s the matter with you, anyway?” he asks impatiently.
“I’m wearing high heels,” explains daughter weakly.
“Why don’t you buy some sensible shoes?”
End of father-daughter chats on morning walks.
I escaped from Dad’s frowns by returning to the musical salt mines in New York. By the end of the summer, my voice coach pronounced me ready to tackle the concert circuit again. Reathel and I took off on October 2, and I sang my way across a lot of the United States. Atlanta, Georgia; Raleigh, North Carolina; St. Louis, Missouri, with Vice President Barkley in the audience; Columbus, Ohio; and Battle Creek, Michigan. I ended my tour on November 26 at Constitution Hall. Dad and my voice coach sat side by side in the presidential box. He turned to her and said, “Don’t be upset if I start tearing up programs during the concert. I always do that when I’m nervous.”
“I do the same thing,” my coach said.
Between them they tore up at least four programs, but the concert was a great success. I sang three encores, and Dad looked so pleased you’d almost think he had been reelected all over again.
Along the concert trail, and in nationally syndicated columns, there had been an inevitable number of nasty comments about me exploiting my role as the President’s daughter to make money on my supposedly mediocre voice. I never claimed I was one of the great singers of all time. But I did feel I had achieved professional competence. I was pleased when the Saturday Evening Post asked me to write an article telling my side of the story. I pointed out, among other things, that I had gone to New York early in 1944, before there was even a hint of Dad becoming vice president, and submitted my voice to the judgment of professional coaches to see if I had the necessary potential. They assured me I had the vocal equipment, if I was willing to put in the hours of practice it would take to reach professional competence.
The Post article was called “Why Shouldn’t I Sing?” and when Dad read it, he was impressed by the amount of down-to-earth Truman-style facts I had managed to get into a magazine he regarded (with good reason) as hostile to him. He was so pleased he read the article twice and wrote me the following letter:
April 22, 1950
Dear Margie: - I have just finished another reading of the article in today’s Saturday Evening Post. It is a very good statement of the facts - made in such a way as to offend no one - not even your very touchy family on both sides! I really don’t see how you ever succeeded in getting the terrible anti-Truman Post to publish the facts as they are. . . .
While I was out singing for my supper - and dreadful suppers they usually were on the great American road - my best friend Drucie Snyder, daughter of Dad’s Secretary of the Treasury, was doing something a lot more important: falling in love. She became engaged to Major John Ernest Horton, one of the White House aides, late in 1949, with the wedding scheduled for January 26 in the National Cathedral. This was one of the major events of the Washington season and there was a whirl of parties connected with it. I think Dru’s marriage gave Dad something of a shock. We had always been so close we were practically sisters in his eyes, and it made him realize we had really grown up. On January 15, 1950, Dad and Mother went to a party for Drucie and in a philosophic mood, he penned the following note on his calendar:
Bess and I go to a “brunch” - whatever that is - at the Smith’s place out in Va. They have a lovely place out on the road to Leesburg - about a mile south of the road and seven or eight miles west of Falls Church.
The party was for the daughter of the Sec. of the Treasury - one of my oldest and very best friends. I remember - as all men over sixty do - when Drucie was born. She has grown up along with Margie and Jane Lingo and now she is getting married to a nice boy John Horton of Kansas City.
When I came into the Blair House from the party above mentioned a call from my Air Aide, Gen. Landry, was awaiting me. He told me that Gen. Η. H. (Happy) Arnold had died. The first of the Big Five to go. A grand man, a great commander and one of the original U.S. Air Force. He was a good friend of mine - a great loss.
They come, they get married, they pass. It is life - but sometimes hard to bear.
Four days later Dad wrote an interesting combination of an obituary and reminiscence for General Arnold. In the light of coming events, the last sentence is notable.
General of the Air Force Henry H. Arnold was buried in Arlington today. He was a great man. I knew him when he was a Major in the Signal Corps. He was at Ft. Riley, Kansas, in 1921 or 1922 when I was there.
On another occasion at Ft. Riley I attended a party given by the Commandant for Lt. Col. Patton, afterwards “Blood & Guts” on the occasion of his promotion from Major. The Commandant was Lt. Col. Wainwright, known as “Skinny,” who long afterwards held the bag for General of the Army MacArthur in the Philippines. Patton and Wainwright were tops in my book. I am not acquainted with MacArthur.
Dad’s knowledge of mil
itary history frequently amazed many people. Joe Feeney, the genial ex-navy captain who became the White House congressional liaison man in 1949, had majored in history in college, and he loved to draw Dad into conversations on their mutually favorite subject. Two others who invariably joined the conversation - I should add that most of this talking was done at Key West; there simply wasn’t time in the White House - were Charlie Ross and Bill Hassett, both very well-read gentlemen.
One night, the four of them began discussing the great military battles of history. Charlie and Bill began disagreeing quite vehemently on who did what and why. “There’s only one way to settle this,” Dad said, and called for four settings of silverware. He placed them on the table and proceeded to give a step-by-step narration of the fourteen major battles of world history, starting with Hannibal’s victory at Cannae. As they were going to bed that night, Joe Feeney said, “Mr. President, I never enjoyed anything so much. My father-in-law was a newspaper editor, but he was a great disciple of religious history. One night I listened to him for a couple of hours while he went over the thirty-six forms of religion, who the founders were, that sort of thing.”
Dad’s eyes brightened. “You know I’ve been doing some studying on religious history,” he said. “Tomorrow morning down at the beach we’ll talk about it.”
As promised, the next morning Dad took Joe with him for the five or six block walk to the private beach where he swam at Key West. They sat on the sea wall, and for two hours he discussed religious history with the same kind of detail he had lavished on the fourteen great battles.
“Mr. Truman was so far ahead of the professors I had in history,” Joe says, “that there was simply no comparison.”
George Elsey made a similar comment to me. “When I first became an aide, I must confess I was a little condescending about the President’s supposed expertise in history. After all, I had majored in history at Princeton and Harvard.” George smiled ruefully and shook his head. “I soon found out that he was one of the most thoroughly informed men, historically, that I have ever met. When I made a historical reference or comparison, he not only agreed with me, but his comments very quickly made it clear that he was familiar with all the details.”
Although I have been repeatedly exposed to Dad’s prowess in history, there are still times when even I am a little staggered by the depth of his knowledge. For instance, I was going through his letter file for the year 1948 and came across a note he dashed off to a New Yorker, commenting on a newspaper editorial which had compared Henry Wallace to the Greek demagogue, Alcibiades. Dad disagreed. “Aeschines is the person Henry most resembles. Of course, when Alcibiades went over to the enemy, that is Sparta, he followed a line that Henry is now following. It is a most difficult thing these days to find reporters and editors who know anything about Ancient History.”
Aeschines was a Greek politician who argued that it was hopeless for democratic Athens to oppose the power of militaristic Macedonia, and recommended surrender to them.
Dad’s expertise in history was something he brought to the presidency. In his seven and three-quarters years in the White House, he became an expert on many other matters as well. A good example of this aspect of his presidency was the debate over interest rates between the Federal Reserve Board and the Treasury Department. John Snyder favored one approach, and he made a forthright presentation of his case. But as usual Dad insisted on hearing every conceivable point of view on the subject. He sent for every top monetary man in the country to come to Washington to talk with him. Among them was that quintessential Republican, Winthrop Aldrich, chairman of the Chase National Bank. Joe Feeney made a special trip to New York to persuade Aldrich to come to Washington. He very grumpily agreed, after warning Joe in advance he was on the side of the Federal Reserve Board.
Aldrich came in about ten o’clock one night for a fifteen-minute talk. Joe Feeney and four or five other aides were so intrigued by the potential clash of personalities between him and Dad that they lingered in the outer office, waiting to see what would happen. Fifteen minutes passed and no Aldrich. Thirty minutes, and still no Aldrich. An hour and a half elapsed before he finally emerged, looking a little dazed. “You know, gentlemen,” he said to Joe Feeney and the other aides, “it’s no wonder that he’s the President. He’s a better banker than I am.”
For six weeks, Dad talked this way to bankers and tax experts and economic advisers from as far away as California. Finally, he ruled in favor of the Federal Reserve Board. Joe Feeney cannot help sounding a little bitter when he looks back on the press reaction to the decision. “Every newspaper in the country said it was made in a twenty-minute discussion, and that John Snyder would probably resign that day, which was ridiculous.”
Dad was always willing to experiment with new approaches to old problems. But unlike Presidents who have succeeded him, he found little use for the so-called political intellectuals from our universities, who have since become such a force - not a very positive one, in my opinion - on the Washington scene. George Elsey tells an amusing story about one attempt to use these theoretical gentlemen early in 1950. A social psychologist with a great professional reputation had known George in his student days at Princeton, and he took advantage of this acquaintance to make numerous suggestions about Dad’s speeches, aimed at increasing their persuasive powers. George finally got tired of corresponding with him and invited him to come down to Washington and participate in the actual writing of a presidential speech.
The invitation was eagerly accepted, and the theorist was soon in the White House, talking about inductive reasoning and similar jargon of his trade. “I introduced him to my fellow speechwriters Dave Bell and Dave Lloyd, both of whom knew of him by reputation,” George says. “The speech was not a particularly sensitive one and there were no questions of security or other matters to bother us. So we invited the professor to have dinner with us that evening and work with us on the speech.”
At 4:30 a.m., the professor walked out of the White House and returned to Princeton. He was never heard from again.
Even though his senatorial years were growing distant by 1949, my father still remained in close touch with the personalities and prejudices of most leading senators and congressmen. He continued to put up with their prima donna complexes, their idiosyncrasies, and their prejudices. (If you think I am exaggerating, let me reveal to you that when the Big Four - the Speaker of the House, the majority leader of the House, the president pro tem of the Senate, the majority leader of the Senate - came to Dad’s office for their weekly meeting, they frequently got into an argument over who should go in first.) Most important, Dad maintained his friendship with senators on both sides of the aisle. Along with Senator Vandenberg of Michigan, he was friendly with Senator Styles Bridges of New Hampshire and Senator William Langer of North Dakota, both outspoken Republicans. While he used Joe Feeney for day-to-day liaison, Dad did a great deal of cajoling and arm twisting himself. “He could pick up a phone and talk to ninety percent of the people in the Senate any time of the day or night,” Joe Feeney says. “Even some of his worst enemies - as far as the newspapers were concerned. When we were trying to push a bill through, we got suggestions from everyone, but it was hard to beat the President. He was really a fine professor in human chemistry. He generally knew where to go; if he couldn’t go direct, he generally knew how to get there.”
Even Joe Feeney, with his daily contacts on the Hill, was seldom ahead of Dad in judging how a senator would vote. One of the big battles of the second term was over the displaced persons bill. It aroused the forces of bigotry and reaction almost as viciously as the Communists-in-government agitation. Dad was fighting to get into the United States people who were languishing in refugee camps, five years after the war was over. Their own countries refused to take them back, or they could not return to their homelands because the Communists would kill them. In the course of this battle, Joe Feeney came to Dad and told him excitedly he had just persuaded a particular Eastern De
mocratic senator to switch his vote to the administration’s side. Dad shook his head and said, “You’d better go back and talk with him again.”
Joe did so, and returned to tell Dad flatly that he was wrong. The senator had promised once more to vote in favor of the bill.
“Joe,” Dad said, “you and I had better go over and have a dip in the pool.”
They went for a swim, and Dad gave him a very quiet lecture which began: “Now I want to tell you something. Politics is a very unusual game. You have to know the background of each senator and you have to know the reason why he’s in the Senate.”
The following day the vote was taken, and I regret to say we lost. Joe glumly called in the results, and Dad said, “I’ll make a bet with you, your friend wasn’t with us.”
“You’re sure right,” Joe said mournfully.
Dad also kept in close touch with public spokesmen outside of Congress. One of these was Walter White, the head of the NAACP. Another was Samuel Cardinal Stritch of Chicago. He rarely went to Chicago without having a private meeting with him. Another churchman with whom he was close was Richard Cardinal Cushing of Boston. Dad not only liked him but enjoyed him as a character of the first order. One time, when Dad was in Boston, he called Cardinal Cushing and told him he would like to come for a visit. He assumed it would be private and off the record as usual. When he arrived at the Cardinal’s residence, escorted by Matt Connelly and Joe Feeney, there was a brass band out front and a brigade of Knights of Columbus with plumed hats. Dad got out of the car and said, “You know, this is the quietest reception I have ever had.”
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