Truman (97 page)

More than once in his presidency, Truman would be remembered saying it was remarkable how much could be accomplished if you didn’t care who received the credit. But in this case he insisted that Marshall be the one most honored because Marshall deserved no less.

He also commented realistically, “Anything that is sent up to the Senate and House with my name on it will quiver a couple of times and die.”

But Truman was the President and so the Marshall Plan would be his inevitably, be it a success or failure. His confidence in Marshall could have misfired and brought embarrassment and trouble to the administration. A Marshall Plan that failed would assuredly have become a Truman Plan.

One member of the Policy Planning Staff, Louis J. Halle, later said of Truman that he had in Marshall a soldier of the highest prestige, in Acheson a man of both commanding intellect and fierce personal integrity who at critical moments, like Truman, was willing to risk his own career rather than abstain from doing what he conceived to be right, and in Kennan a man of Shakespearean insight and vision. Among Truman’s own strongest qualities was “his ability to appreciate these men and to support them as they supported him.”

The Republicans were determined to cut taxes and expenditures, and already since the war, $3 billion had been spent in foreign relief. In a single grant in 1946 the United States had loaned Britain $3.25 billion and now, it seemed, to little purpose. By Will Clayton’s calculations, the Europeans would need $6 or $7 billion in the coming two or three years. When Arthur Vandenberg read this is
The New York Times,
in an article by James Reston, to say that surely he was misinformed. Congress, Vandenberg said, would never approve such sums, not to save anybody.

As all who were involved with the project appreciated, an enormous effort was called for if the people and the Congress were to be Convinced, and the appeal would have to be both American altruism and American self-interest—the same motivating factors that had propelled the idea from the beginning. When Truman called Sam Rayburn to the White House to brief him on what the cost might be, Rayburn was as incredulous as Vandenberg and insisted it would bankrupt the country. Truman said there was no way of telling how many hundreds of thousands of people would starve to death in Europe and that this must not happen, not if it could be prevented. He was also sure, Truman said, that if Europe went “down the drain” in a depression, the United States would follow. “And you and I have both lived through one depression, and we don’t want to have to live through another one, do we, Sam?”

With Britain’s Bevin taking the lead, a hasty conference was organized in Paris, to which the Soviets sent a sizable delegation headed by Molotov. The provisional and largely Communist-dominated government of Czechoslovakia had already indicated that it wished to be included in the program. Communist leaders in Poland and Romania had shown interest. But five days into the conference, after being handed a telegram from Moscow, Molotov stood up from the table and abruptly announced that the Soviet Union was withdrawing. The Marshall Plan, he said, was “nothing but a vicious American scheme for using dollars to buy its way” into the affairs of Europe.

Stalin had found unacceptable two particular American conditions, a pooling of resources that would include Soviet funds to rebuild parts of Western and Central Europe, and an open accounting of how American money was being spent. Eventually seventeen nations would take part; but under Soviet pressure, Czechoslovakia, Poland, Romania, and the other satellite countries of Eastern Europe did not.

By refusing to take part in the Marshall Plan, Stalin had virtually guaranteed its success. Sooner or later congressional support was bound to follow now, whatever the volume of grumbling on the Hill.

Officially it was called the European Recovery Program, or ERP, and the total sum requested was colossal indeed, $17 billion. Bohlen, Kennan, and others from the State Department were assigned to “sell” it to Congress, while a draft of specific plans was being drawn up by Paul Nitze, the young economic adviser. Arthur Vandenberg again played a vital role in the Senate. Marshall himself would eventually make a cross-country speaking tour, to convince business and civic groups, and with great effect, though the daring, wholehearted plan he proposed was not about to happen overnight.

Nor was there a letup in the pressure of events overall. That June, “to curb the powers of big labor,” the Republican-controlled Congress passed by large majorities the Taft-Hartley Act, which outlawed the closed shop, made unions liable for breach of contract, prohibited political contributions from unions, required them to make financial reports, required their leaders to take a non-Communist oath. On Friday, June 20, after two weeks of deliberation, Truman vetoed the bill, calling it an attack on the workingman, though all the Cabinet but Schwellenbach and Hannegan had urged him to sign it, including John Snyder, his closest friend in the Cabinet. Clark Clifford, however, saw it as another chance to take a stand. Clifford wanted Truman to move more to the left on most matters, “to strike for new high ground,” as he later said. “Most of the Cabinet and the congressional leaders were urging Mr. Truman to go slow, to veer a little closer to the conservative line,” Clifford remembered. “They held the image of Bob Taft before him like a bogeyman.” Thousands of letters pouring into the White House also favored the veto, and Truman, who genuinely believed it was a bad bill, knew a veto would go far to bring labor back into Democratic politics. As his daughter Margaret would one day write, remembering the Taft-Hartley veto, “While he was responding to his presidential conscience, my father did not by any means stop being a politician. The two are by no means incompatible.”

It was only a matter of days until Congress voted to override the veto, and in the House more Democrats voted against the President than with him.

On July 25, Congress passed Truman’s sweeping National Security Act, legislation he had sent to the Hill in February and that would mean mammoth change for the whole structure of power in Washington. Its primary purpose was to unify the armed services under a single Department of Defense and a single Secretary of Defense, a goal Truman had been striving for since taking office. It also established the Air Force as a separate military service, set up a new National Security Council, and gave formal authorization to the Central Intelligence Agency.

Though he felt she needed more training before making a professional debut as a concert singer, Truman had supported his adored daughter Margaret in her ambitions all along. So also had her aunt Mary Jane and Mamma Truman, who had been the most enthusiastic, telling her to “go at it, hammer and tongs.” Bess, however, was not pleased, and Grandmother Wallace declared that the stage was no life for a lady.

“If she wants to be a warbler and has the talent and will do the hard work necessary to accomplish her purpose, I don’t suppose I should kick,” Truman had written to his mother and sister. “She’s one nice girl,” he told them in another letter, “and I’m so glad she hasn’t turned out like Alice Roosevelt and a couple of the Wilson daughters.” To Margaret he wrote that it took “work, work and more work” to get satisfactory results, “as your pop can testify.”

She talked for a while of singing under the name of Margaret Wallace, so as not to appear to be capitalizing on his position. But Mamma Truman, extremely displeased, couldn’t understand any name being substituted for Truman.

Since the start of the year Margaret had been living in a small apartment overlooking Central Park in New York, working with her Kansas City teacher, Mrs. Thomas J. Strickler, who also stayed with her in the apartment as chaperon. Truman felt her absence acutely. Like his mother’s precarious condition since her fall in February, it gave him a feeling of emptiness not easy to face. While he was so intensely preoccupied with his responsibilities, time was moving on, life passing him by.

For someone who had spent so much of his life in such male-dominated vocations as the military and politics, he had few close male friends and no real confidants among the men he knew or worked with, any more now than in boyhood. It was the four women in his life, Bess, Mamma, Mary Jane, and Margaret, who mattered above all, whose company and approval he most valued and needed. Now two of them, Mamma and Margaret, appeared to be deserting him.

“Margaret went to New York yesterday and it leaves a blank place here,” he had written to his mother and sister in January 1947. “But I guess the parting time has to come to everybody….”

In early March, with her first performance in the offing, she received a quick note from him:

Margaret Truman, coloratura soprano, made her radio debut in Detroit on March 16, 1947, as a guest on the Ford Motor Company’s “Sunday Evening Hour,” with the Detroit Symphony conducted by Karl Krueger. As reported in the papers, possibly no vocal performer in history had ever appeared for the first time under such pressure, or before so big an audience and so many critics. The broadcast was nationwide on ABC and reportedly 15 million people were listening, making it the largest radio audience ever for such a performance. “She could not help realizing,” observed
The New York Times,
“that not only the immense listening public, but…every vocalist, every singing teacher and vocal student who has access to a radio set, was critically appraising her voice and her interpretations.” In addition, singing with an orchestra was a new experience for her.

Scheduled to have appeared on the program the week before, she had had to back out at the last minute because of a sudden attack of throat and chest pains, diagnosed by Wallace Graham as bronchial pneumonia.

Truman was in Key West the night of the broadcast, still resting after his March 12 speech to Congress. The half hour he spent sitting by the radio, waiting for Margaret’s turn on the show to come, was, he said afterward, as long as any he could remember. “Perhaps,” she later wrote, “sheer naivete saw me through.” She was the first daughter of a President ever to attempt a professional career of her own.

She sang three selections, beginning with the Spanish folk song “Cielito Lindo,” then an aria from Félicien David’s
La Perle du Bresil,
and finishing with “The Last Rose of Summer,” a request of her father’s.

The orchestra indicated its approval with spontaneous applause, and though the Detroit
Times
said she sang no better than a fairly talented student, the reviews were generally good—kinder than she deserved, she later acknowledged. Noel Straus, music critic for
The New York Times,
described her voice as “interesting,” and said she had shown remarkable poise and self-control, considering the pressures she was under. Her phrasing was careful, the legato smooth throughout. “Miss Truman’s work from start to finish,” the reviewer concluded in a judgment that greatly pleased her father, “had an allure that resulted from deep sincerity and an unaffected simplicity of approach.”

At home in Kansas City, to the delight of her father, the
Star
praised her for her courage and called it a “highly agreeable” occasion. The White House switchboard was so engulfed by calls of approval that it had to close down temporarily.

To reporters gathered around at Key West, Truman said he thought she had done “wonderfully,” and for weeks after his return to Washington, it was obvious that nothing pleased him quite so much as to have visitors mention they had heard Margaret on the radio and enjoyed her singing.

Another performance, a full concert this time, was scheduled for May in Pittsburgh. Truman wanted only success for Margaret, but by no means should she become a prima donna.

The Pittsburgh concert had to be postponed at the last minute, however, when word came that Mamma Truman had suffered a stroke and was not expected to live.

Truman flew from Washington immediately. It was his fifth trip home since his mother first fell and broke her hip. Ross, Wallace Graham, the whole presidential entourage were with him and set up headquarters on the eleventh floor of the Muehlebach Hotel. Mamma seemed to improve, knowing he was there, and he stayed on at the Muehlebach for nearly two weeks, driving out from Kansas City to Grandview every day. The weather was poor, chill and raining, and she slept most of the time. As the papers said, “the eyes of the world” were focused on the small yellow clapboard house day after day. Truman worked at the Mission oak table in the parlor. (It was then that he signed the bill for aid to Greece and Turkey.) “Whenever she wakes up,” he told reporters, “she wants to talk to me. I want to be there.”

But then to everyone’s amazement she made a comeback and Truman returned to Washington. He called her nearly every day thereafter, returned for another visit in mid-June, and wrote regularly to Mary Jane, who would read the letters aloud for Mamma. He kept her posted on politics, as he knew she liked. “I’ve come to the conclusion that Taft is no good and Hartley is worse,” he wrote. He also warned her he was about to make a speech she wouldn’t like. It was for the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People. He would be quoting Abraham Lincoln, he said.