Play & Work

A few feet off the southernmost tip of the continental U.S;, the President splashed in the Atlantic Ocean and smiled at the tropical sky. Using his head-up sidestroke, he wore his glasses, as usual. Once a wave dashed them off his face. To his happy surprise, a Secret Service agent later recovered them as they were washed ashore.

In Tones of Authority. On the surface, it was a lazy week, and the 30-odd newsmen assigned to the President sat around fidgeting over the lack of any spot news. In what was intended as a broad hint of their impatience, they staged a mock welcome for Press Secretary Charles Ross and Personal Secretary Matthew Connelly, who arrived to spend a few days with the boss. Sheets, shorts, undershirts and pants were strung across a street on the Navy's Key West submarine base. The Negro girls of Douglass High School, dressed in gym suits, and Walter's Comet Key West Band turned out for a parade.

The President good-naturedly took the hint and held a press conference the next day under a cork tree--his first since the exhausting election campaign. He reported on his physical condition. He weighed 173 lbs. "bedside," he told reporters. He was tanned and relaxed. Correspondent Tom Reynolds of the New Dealing Chicago Sun-Times reported: "He speaks now with tones of authority . . . confident of his mandate." From his cracker-barrel perch on the arch-Republican New York Sun, Columnist H. I. Phillips wrote reassuringly: "I think Harry's hat still fits . . . and that always in his ear he hears his mom whispering, 'Behave yourself, Harry.' "

No Visits to Moscow. The President's way of behaving himself was to end, once & for all, any speculation that he might be thinking of another "Vinson mission" to Moscow. There would be no negotiations with Russia, he said, while Russia blockaded Berlin. He would be happy to talk to Stalin, he added, but only if Stalin came to Washington (highly unlikely).

He had nothing to say about a communication he had had from Chiang Kaishek. All but about $13 million of the $125 million Congress had appropriated for Chinese military aid had been spent, he said. He saw no point in calling a session of the "do-nothing" 80th Congress to act in the emergency.

He said that if anyone wanted to know what his program would be, they should reread his September 1945 message to Congress. And he expected to carry out the Democratic platform, including its planks on civil rights--a challenge which was made sharper by Democratic National Chairman J. Howard McGrath, who, speaking for himself, said that there would be no compromise with the South.

No State Secrets. There was much coming & going. Vice President-elect Alben Barkley departed after spending almost a week. No President and Vice President, said Harry Truman, ever understood each other so perfectly. Mon C. Wallgren, an old crony from the Senate and now the lame-duck Governor of Washington, arrived and gave newsmen an exhibition of his skill at billiards (he was national amateur 18.2 balkline champion in 1929). Air Secretary W. Stuart Symington, whose help in the presidential campaign had been negligible and whose fate now was the secret of Mr. Truman, came & went.

Newsmen whipped themselves up into a froth of excitement when it was announced that Secretary of Defense James Forrestal would arrive. The day before, in Washington, Forrestal had announced that he was sending 1,250 marines from Guam to Tsingtao to reinforce 4,850 marines already in China and help in the evacuation of Americans. For the moment it looked as if something might be cooking on U.S. policy in the Far East.

The Secretary, sweating in the Key West heat, alighted from a plane at Boca Chica airfield and went purposefully to lunch with the President. But lunch included an assortment of Florida politicos; obviously no state secrets were discussed.

At His Service. Forrestal and Major General Alfred M. Gruenther, who is attached to the Joint Chiefs of Staff and who had flown down with him, had a word in private with the President afterwards. Photographers who were allowed to snap the scene from a distance of 25 ft. saw Mr. Truman chopping the air with his hands as he talked. Forrestal, it was announced later, had simply reported on a recent six-day trip he had taken to Europe. The interview lasted a scant 45 minutes and Forrestal flew home again.

For the rest of the time the President swam, signed documents, lunched, napped, appeared in pith helmet and various tails-out sport shirts, strolled around the base, ate dinner, played poker in the evenings. He never went fishing and almost never ventured outside of the base into the flat, rambling town of Key West (pop. 18,000).

The President made one appointment. He named John Foster Dulles, Tom Dewey's foreign-policy adviser, to substitute temporarily for George Marshall in Paris as chief of the U.S. delegation to the U.N. General Assembly, thus reaffirming his faith in the bipartisan foreign policy.

No Worry. At week's end, Sam Rayburn dropped in for a couple of days, and kept himself carefully covered to avoid getting sunburned. The President gave him a sport shirt (coffee-colored with figures of cranes and palm fronds) and took a walk with him down the beach. As Sam left, he told reporters that the country had nothing to worry about. "I don't see anything for anyone to be scared about," he said. "If a major recession or depression comes--which I do not expect--it will not be justified by our economic situation but will be man-made." Nor did Texas' Sam, who is slated to be Speaker of the House, see any chance of a coalition of some Southern Democrats and Northern Republicans being able to stop Harry Truman's program.

This week the vacation ended. Harry Truman climbed into the presidential plane, the Independence, and flew back to Washington to take up residence in Blair House until the sagging White House, across the street, has been repaired (TIME, Nov. 22).*

The first business on his agenda was a talk with George Marshall, who arrived by plane from Paris the next day. The Secretary's plane had to circle over National Airport for half an hour, as it had the last time Marshall flew in, waiting for Mr. Truman to arrive by limousine. The President, grinning broadly, greeted Marshall and Mrs. Marshall in a downpour of rain and led the way to his car.

At the White House, the President and the Secretary talked for a little more than half an hour, crossed the street for lunch at Blair House with members of the Cabinet. When Marshall came out he declared: "I talked to the President and I had lunch with him and that is all I can say."

* To get President Harry Truman safely back & forth to the office wing of the White House, which he will continue to use, Washington police were installing special signal lights at the corner of Pennsylvania Avenue and Jackson Place. When the President crosses Pennsylvania Avenue, a master switch will stop traffic in all directions.

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