June 16, 1954
Dear Mr. President,
Some day I must meet Jim Blair, get some of his stories and particularly get him to talk about you. That I think ought to be good and would come in handy the next time you offer me into bondage as an advisor to Foster Dulles. Not that he doesn’t need a whole company of them, he most certainly does. But his trouble is that he won’t listen to those he has already.
You are quite right to be worried about the world situation. It does not seem possible that a spendthrift crew could dissipate their inheritance as this Administration has done. In eighteen months we have gone from a position of acknowledged, gladly accepted and successful leadership to a position of impotent sulking while our alliances—and, indeed, some of our friends—disintegrate. And the trouble centers right where you said it did in your press club speech—in the White House. The other day one of my Republican friends said to me:—
“I want to apologize to someone and you’ll have to do. I just didn’t realize how much we had when we really had a President.”
The next few months can really be bad. If things go on as they are now going and we have no plans or leadership, and if about October the French have a first class disaster at Hanoi with large scale local desertion of local troops and the rest of the army pinned to the beaches at Haiphong, and Congress campaigning—then what? Ted White has a first class article on Indo-China in the last Reporter which is worth your reading.
Even at this late hour it would be possible to work out a policy designed to regroup, hold, and reconstruct. But it requires some basic decisions and a real show down to determine who is boss in the present Administration. The decisions are (1) whether our Alliances are or are not the foundation of our policies, if so they have got to be restored, particularly our understanding with the British, and (2) what is our purpose in South East Asia. Is it to save it, or as much as possible, from Communism? Or is it to try to destroy with arms the regime in China. If it is the latter—or rather unless we make it clear that it is not the latter, we shall get no help, our alliances will further disintegrate, and if we try it alone we may blunder into World War III. This, I think, is the heart of the matter and our people are getting very badly confused. “New Looks”—which are not new and look about as far as an ostrich with its head in the sand—, “United Fronts” without knowing with whom or about what we want to be united, intervention, alone one day, and the next only on conditions as long as a life insurance contract & involving no American boy anywhere on his own feet—these shifts, twists and turns have people groggy. And the grog is that prohibition hooch which makes some people go crazy and blinds others.
In the meantime we have added another grandson—my son David’s—to the roster. He came into the world sooner than he was supposed to—either because he didn’t know what he was getting into, or because he thought he could vote this fall.
We are so happy that you enjoyed the evening with us. It was a great one for us. Our warmest greetings to Mrs. Truman and yourself.
Sincerely,
Dean
On the evening of June 18, 1954, while waiting backstage to appear as himself in the musical Call Me Madam, Truman suffered a violent seizure and was taken to the hospital, where his gallbladder and appendix were removed. Acheson provides a whimsical diagnosis for the cause of Truman’s difficulties. Dr. Wallace H. Graham was Truman’s personal physician during and after his presidency. “A certain general” is the occupant of the White House, President Eisenhower.
June 21, 1954
Dear Mr. President,
Country bumpkins like Alice and I did not know of your illness, I think happily, until we knew also that you were sitting up perkily and doing well. It is a mean operation you had and will take you quite a while to be really your old self. I doubt whether anyone knows whether you will be a good patient, probably not, because you don’t know what it is to be ill. If Mrs. Truman needs any help—which I also doubt—all she has to do is to call a special Cabinet meeting and we shall all be there prepared for once to lay down the law.
When papers tell us that you had a gangrenous gall bladder, I was at once prepared to tell Doc Graham how you got it. It comes from reading the newspapers. No one can escape some malady from this cause. With me it has taken the form of an attack of gout, probably from a suppressed desire to kick some one or more person or persons unnamed but not hard to identify.
For your convalescence I have asked the book shop to send you Cecil Woodham-Smith’s The Reason Why, a really superb account of the Sebastopol campaign. When you get acquainted with Lords Raglan, Cardigan and Lucan you will be reminded of a certain general we both know. It will take your mind off the present and give your secretions a chance to adjust.
Our most affectionate greetings go to Mrs. Truman and to you. Get well quickly but get active slowly. You will be all the more powerful for the rest and quiet.
Most sincerely,
Dean
Truman suffered an allergic reaction to an antibiotic following his operation.
June 27, 1954
Dear Mr. Acheson—
Harry deeply appreciated your thoughtful telegram and one morning when I came in I found him reading the book you so generously sent him, Thank you loads and loads.
We are still remembering the delightful evening in your home—it was one of the very happiest we had while we were there.
We are really having a battle now to whip this wretched terramycin and I am definitely worried.
Sincerely,
Bess
[Postscript by Bess Truman:] Am in one of those [word indecipherable] writing stages again but not much use telling you that!
Rose Conway was Truman’s personal secretary and administrative assistant from 1945 to 1972.
June 30, 1954
Dear Mrs. Truman:
It was very good of you in the midst of your worry and vast load of messages to write me. Since Sunday the reports have given us some comfort, as did my talk with Rose Conway. I hope your anxiety is lessened. It is touching the way so many people—elevator boys, our cook, taxi drivers, people on the street—keep asking me about the President. He is deeply loved—even by the Press. We are earnestly hoping that from now on all goes well.
Mr. Churchill, whom I saw yesterday, asked most warmly about him and said that he would like to fly out to Kansas City before going home. But Mr. Truman’s recent set back made that seem a bad idea. The old gentleman is in good shape and felt that his trip here has been very necessary and successful. Eden was also looking very well indeed.
Please, under no circumstances, answer this note. It merely carries an extra greeting and word to you both.
Most sincerely,
Dean Acheson
Acheson refers to Joseph M. Jones, Special Assistant to the Assistant Secretary of State for Public Affairs, 1946–48. Jones published The Fifteen Weeks (February 11–June 5, 1947) in early 1955. Main Duck Island in Lake Ontario was Secretary of State John Foster Dulles’s favorite vacation retreat.
September 21, 1954
Dear Mr. President:
… I am delighted to hear from Charlie Murphy that you are improving daily. I hope that you will take it easy and not be drawn into making a lot of speeches in the campaign. You like to do this, but it really takes a good deal more out of you than you think, and this seems to be one year when you can let some other Democrats take the burden.
A man named Joseph Jones has talked to Dave Lloyd and has written or will write to you asking permission to look at some of your files for the first half of 1947 and, if you have time, talk with you briefly. The latter you need not feel any obligation to do unless you happen to feel like it at the time. But I do hope that you will both let Joe look at the files he has in mind and ask Bill Hillman and the others to be a little cooperative with him, since they can help him greatly and he can help not only them but the whole cause.
Joe is writing a book called Fifteen Weeks, in which he is developing the thesi
s that in the time from the end of February, 1947, when the British Ambassador notified you that the British were withdrawing from Greece and Turkey, and the middle of June, you had made the most far reaching decision in foreign policy which laid the foundation for everything which has been done since. Joe worked for me at the time. He is a professional writer, an economist, and can do the job well. I do hope that you can let him get a look at the material which he needs.
I trust that the check arrived in time for you to buy the property fronting on the Library site. The obligation of the highway commission to take it off the Library hands looks a little tenuous from this distance, but we are counting on you to save the day.
There are two cracks of my son’s which I must pass on to you. He says that Christian Dior has brought great trouble on the Administration. First he designed the New Look, and the Administration designed a foreign policy after it. Now he comes out with the flat bust and so does the Administration. His other observation is that there really is a basis for a deal with the Communists. We will give them Duck Island and they will give us Formosa.
Our warmest greeting to you and Mrs. Truman.
Sincerely yours,
Dean
This is Truman’s first substantive letter to Acheson since the onset of his illness in mid-June. He refers to Acheson’s article in the March 28, 1954 New York Times and to one in the autumn 1954 Yale Review titled “The Responsibility for Decision in Foreign Policy.” He mentions the only speech he made during the 1954 campaign.
October 14, 1954
Dear Dean:
I am very sorry to be so long telling you how much I am in your debt for letters, for the article in the New York Times Sunday Magazine and for the Yale Review piece on Responsibility for Decision in Foreign Policy.
You’ve no idea how heart warming it is to this still controversial former President to have the people who actually knew the motivating facts, tell what those facts were. No one knew the travail we went through in those years from Apr. 12, 1945 to Jan. 20, 1953 as did you, Gen. Marshall, John Snyder and Charlie Brannan. As you know those decisions had to be made and as you also know they were based on the facts presented by the most reliable men a President ever had to give him the facts.
Dean, I’ve had a hell of a time since June 19th. Went to our outdoor theater in Swope Park to see Call Me Madam which I’ve never seen (and don’t want to) and didn’t see that Friday night. A pain overtook me which I couldn’t stop with all the will power I could exercise and the “Boss” drove me home. It is fifteen miles and I thought we’d never arrive. Wallie Graham was in the back yard and went upstairs with me. Saturday was a blank. I guess he gave me knockout drops. Went to the hospital Saturday night and after some consultation Doc told me that the white corpuscles were increasing at the rate of a 1000 an hour and that a little butchering would be necessary. I wrote a codicil to my will and went out—I mean out.
Well, Doc did a fine job and gave me a fancy hem stitched sewing up. They gave me about five or ten gallons of antibiotics by sticking needles in veins. But they just couldn’t kill me. Only when I was seasick on the Zeppelin coming home from France in 1919 did I feel worse.
You know so many flowers came to the hospital that I supplied every customer from the basement to the seventh floor. In addition to that five or six bushels, a hundred thousand cards and letters came asking me to get well. I just had to accommodate ’em.
Bess says I’m worse than a Bridge Club Lady—talk about my operation and bore people to death. That’s what you get for being my good friend. I was very sorry about the Jones affair. But he was not very courteous and I’m afraid of breaking my contract, so I told him to wait until the manuscript is in the publisher’s hands on my book and then we’d go on from there.
I’m only making one political speech and for me it’s on a very high plane. I can see your grin on that one. It will be broadcast at 9:30 P.M. our time on the American Network—no television thank goodness.
On Nov. 6 we are having a Library dinner here and do you know believe it or not they’ve sold 387 tickets at $100.00 a piece and no invitations are out yet. The room only holds 600 and they say that you won’t be able to get ’em in. Now what about that prophet in his home town?
If you and Mrs. Acheson will come out I’ll furnish you tickets and free room and board at our house. Anyway I want to put you on the witness stand for the book if you come. Marshall, Snyder, and Charlie Brannan and Oscar Chapman have all been through the ordeal and not one has been indicted for perjury—so surely the greatest lawyer of them all should [not] be afraid of a Truman Grand Jury! Dean, I am anxious to talk with you about the main theme of the book because I have the utmost confidence in your judgment.
My best to Mrs. Acheson—Alice.
Answer this in person Nov 6!
Sincerely,
Harry Truman
Truman’s lingering convalescence from his operation in June prevented him from taking a substantial part in the 1954 election season. He did no campaigning and made only one speech, at a Midwest Democratic Rally held in Kansas City on October 16, which was carried on national radio. Truman began the speech by saying that some had advised him that, after eight years as President, he should now be an elder statesman “on a high and mighty plane and say nothing except the nicest things,” that he “speak softly and not in what they call the whistle-stop technique.” Truman couldn’t take this advice. “The whistle-stop technique,” he said, “is the very heart of American political debate and political frankness in this free country. Again tonight I intend to be myself and speak plainly on the issues.” For half an hour, he attacked the Republicans in his plain-speaking style. “I cannot see where there is any leadership among the Republicans to deal with the great needs of this country,” he insisted. “On the contrary, what I do see is a hopeless drifting and a gradual surrender to selfish interests at home.” Once or twice he found his typed speech too tepid and decided to say something stronger. The typed copy read, “I have not tried to single out all the mistakes that have been made—the list is very long.” Truman, not satisfied, wrote in, “It would take all night and all day tomorrow to list them.” Again, where the speech talks about economic problems brought on by the Republicans, Truman adds: “If the Republicans had controlled the government for the 20 years after 1932 you’d have no job, no farm, no business to lose in 1951.”
Acheson listened to Truman’s radio address. Philip Jessup was Truman’s delegate to the United Nations in 1951.
October 19, 1954
Dear Mr. President,
It was a great joy to see the familiar handwriting again and to hear once more on Saturday night the well remembered voice. Phil Jessup, Alice, and I listened to you together. You came through very well indeed. We were all so excited and delighted that we all had another drink which we did not need. Alice said that just to hear your strong healthy straightforward talk regardless of the arguments, after these studio trained swoon boys, made her sure that everything was all right somehow or other. We all agreed and I know a great host of listeners did also.
I am sorry that we could not have helped with the text but somewhere the signals got mixed up. David and I wrote a thirty minute speech in which we had some pretty good touches. Then David got word to cut it to 12 minutes. So the good touches went out. But you spoke for a full half hour and timed it beautifully.
It was fine, but that is enough for this campaign. You must take it easy for a while longer.
Contrary to Mrs. Truman’s prediction your report on your illness was most eagerly read. I had known from her letter that you had been very ill indeed and that for a while it was touch and go. Your account has made it vivid and brought home how lucky we all were that your number was not up. I’m glad too that you had a chance to see the deep affection which the country has for you. At one time I thought that we would have to go to New York to comfort the editor of the Times who was almost in a state of collapse.
Please don’t worry a
bout the Joe Jones affair. He managed it very badly and although he is a good man and will do a good book for your administration he is not tactful or courteous and does get excited. Dave and I should have paved the way with a careful explanation of what he wanted so that you could have considered it carefully and in advance. I do not think that he would have led to any trouble on the contract—which could not be risked at all. There is really only one fact which he needs to ascertain and should be shown in a document which General Marshall and I brought to you and you approved on February 26, 1947. He does not need to quote it at all. Perhaps some time you and I can talk about it.
This brings me to the sad fact that, although Alice and I would dearly love to do so, we cannot accept your most welcome invitation to be with you on November 6th. I have to speak at Cambridge, Mass., on the 4th, attend a Yale Corporation meeting at New Haven on the 5th and 6th and argue a case in the Supreme Court on the 8th. But I hope that this does not rule us out forever and that you and Mrs. Truman will let us come later on at some time when you have an open date. Probably I will not be much use on the book but it would be great fun to talk it over with you, and the greatest joy to see you both.
Bob and Adele Lovett will be here with us this weekend and we shall talk a great deal of you as we did when we stayed with them last summer. Both of them were ill last winter and spring (Adele had her gall bladder out) but they are fine now. Bob finds private life as dull as I do—and, I suspect, you do, too. It has its compensations but they are not in the field of absorbing interest.
All our children are flourishing. David has presented us—or rather his wife has—with a fifth grandchild. Time marches on! What I hear and read of Margaret is full of happiness and success in her work.
With most affectionate greetings to Mrs. Truman and yourself.
Affection and Trust: The Personal Correspondence of Harry S. Truman and Dean Acheson, 1953-1971 Page 8
