A SPECTATOR 'S NOTEBOOK
THE installation of Mr. Truman as President of the United States is so much a formality after the dramatic vote of last November, and in view of the fact that it is a case of Mr. Truman succeeding Mr. Truman, that the ceremony could be expected to make no such impression on the world as the inauguration, for example, of Mr. Roosevelt in 1932 did. It must not be forgotten, all the same, that this is the first time Mr. Truman has been elected President. Though he has already served almost a full term, that was only because as Vice-President he succeeded automatically on President Roosevelt's death in March, 1945. But it was no accident that Mr. Truman was chosen as running-mate for Mr. Roosevelt at the 1944 election. He was deliberately selected by the President himself, and the President was a singularly sagacious judge of men. This is made clear in that illuminating volume Roosevelt and Hopkins. " People seemed to think," wrote Mr. Hopkins of the choice of the Vice-Presidential candidate, " that Truman was just suddenly pulled out of a hat—but that wasn't true. .The President had had his eye on him for a long time. . . . He'd got himself known and liked about the country, and, above all, he was very popular in the Senate." It is pertinent today to recall the new President's act in the international field. In May, 1945, he sent Harry Hopkins on a special mission to Moscow to take up with Marshal Stalin face to face the palpable •deterioration in Russo-American relations and see what could be done to improve things. It was Hopkins's last job and it was unsuccessful. But it demonstrates President Truman's anxiety for an understanding with Russia—an emotion which has plainly lost nothing of its force since.
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