Balcony Prediction

Harry Truman began his fourth year in the White House last week with the assertion that he would be there for four more years. This optimistic prediction popped out in the course of his press conference, when the New York Herald Tribune's Bert Andrews asked the President if he expected to be around to use the newly completed White House balcony. He would be there, the President declared; Andrews needn't worry about that.

The President then showed the newsmen some photographs which convincingly demonstrated that the long awnings previously used on the portico spoiled the classic proportions of its columns. The portico, he said, was designed by Thomas Jefferson, and it was intended to have such a balcony, because Jefferson had designed several other mansions which were finally completed with balconies.

His motives in building the balcony, he added, had been entirely misrepresented. They were not selfish; the balcony would be too public for him to use, and besides, working from early in the morning until late at night, he would seldom get the chance. He was moved by the esthetics of the thing and by financial considerations: the unsightly awnings had to be replaced each summer at a cost of about $700 (the balcony will cost some $15,000).

Situation: Precarious. The talk easily turned to politics. The President admitted that Bronx Boss Ed Flynn and New York State Democratic Chairman Paul Fitzpatrick had paid a super-secret call to discuss the New York political situation, and insisted that they had left happy. Reporters learned later that Flynn had shown the President an advance copy of a resolution he introduced at a meeting of New York's convention delegates, in which Truman's domestic policy was praised and his Palestine policy damned. The delegates themselves were uninstructed; the New York situation was unsettled at best.

Sincere Heart. The President already knew that the California situation was even more precarious. At a Jackson Day dinner in Los Angeles, National Chairman J. Howard McGrath had ended his speech by asserting that Truman was trying his best "to do what he thinks Franklin D. Roosevelt is calling to him from heaven to perform . . . His heart is just as sincere, his purposes are fought for just as "courageously, his stand is for the right. .. Can we ask for more than this in a leadership?" The strongly pro-Eisenhower crowd, clanking silverware on the wineglasses, roared back: "Yes! Yes!"

The President also:

P: Urged the purchase of Security Loan bonds as a means of fighting inflation.

P: Ordered Federal Works Administrator Philip Fleming to send surplus federal property to Ohio River flood victims.

P: Addressed the Congress on the soth anniversary of Cuban independence.

P: Appointed scholarly Career Diplomat Herschel V. Johnson, former member of the U.S. delegation to the U.N., as Ambassador to Brazil to succeed William D. Pawley (see LATIN AMERICA).

P: Performed the annual rite of spring demanded of Presidents since William Howard Taft* by tossing out the first ball to inaugurate the Washington Senators' baseball season at Griffith Stadium. The President is ambidextrous; after mulling it over for a few seconds, he threw the ball with his left hand.

* Taft's hippopotamoid heave in 1910 opened a game in which the late Walter ("Big Train") Johnson pitched a one-hit, 3-0 victory over Philadelphia.

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