HUNTING MR. TRUMAN
Obviously it is not for British observers to judge a case Which the relevant American authorities have not yet heard in full. But nobody here has been led into doubt of Mr. Truman's loyalty to the constitution of the country of which he was President. To that extent what President Eisenhower has already said in defence of his predecessor would be echoed by most reasonable people here. But the President has also refused to interfere with the action that the Attorney General, Mr. Brownell, has already taken, and that fact must also be carefully weighed on this side of the Atlantic. Very few people here are fully aware of the surprising extent to which Com- munists wormed their way into the Roosevelt and Truman administrations, 'or of the extent to which this latest spectacular charge has shaken even the most responsible American citizens. We have been driven by our justified dislike of Senator McCarthy to the assumption, which unfortunately is not a sound one, that all estimates of the power of Communism in the United States are over-estimates. But President Eisenhower himself has allowed the charge td come forward and the Presi- dent is not in Senator McCarthy's pocket. Everything now depends on the appraisal of the full facts of the White case. The shock that a Communist might possibly have penetrated into such a high place as Mr. White occupied has been balanced by the shock that an ex-President should have been called to account before Congress. The rest must be a matter of fact.
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