TRUMAN'S OPTIMISM
By EDWARD MONTGOMERY New York, January 21
WHEN Harry S. Truman stepped to the massed microphones yesterday to deliver his first Inaugural Address as elected President of the United States, he evidently felt that he had a double duty to perform. He had to speak not only to the people of the United States upon taking up his office as their thirty-second Presi-
dent; he had to speak for the people of the United States to the rest of the world. And when a President of the United States attempts to speak for his own people to the rest of the world he has to be very careful what he says. There is a strict limitation imposed by American public opinion. It is not enough for the President of the United States (as it is for the heads of some other Govern- ments) merely to be sure of the support of h's party and of its majority in the legislature or Parliament. He must be sure of the support -of a sound majority public opinion as well. If he goes beyond that, he very soon finds himself in grave political trouble. President Roosevelt, for all his immense political flair, made that mistake at least twice, once with the Supreme Court " packing " proposal and again with the famous " quarantine" speech at Chicago in 1937. Net can any Gallup Poll help the President to determine just what that limitation may be in any given circumstances. He must rely entirely on his own political judgement and intuition. At the same time, this very limitation carries with it an assurance to those abroad who may be affected by American policy—an assurance that what the President says the American people mean.
When all that is borne in mind, perhaps the most remarkable thing about Mr. Truman's inaugural speech was its ringing overtone of confidence—confidence in himself, confidence in the American people, and confidence in America's ability to fulfil the great role in world affairs which he outlined for her. In the whole speech there was no shadow or hint of fear or doubt, or of qualification or question of the wisdom or eventual success of the course upon which the United States is set. In expressing that confidence Mr. Truman, was, I think, truly reflecting the mood of the American people as they go forward into a new year and a new quadrennium of political direction. The New York Times put this feeling well in the conclusion of its leader on Mr. Truman's speech this morning. Looking to the future, it ended: " What will be the scene, on what subject will the speech be, four years from yesterday ? Will we have won through to a lasting peace ? No radio, no television set, can give us that glimpse into the future. We can only say today—and this with no partisanship and no magnification of an individual—that the American democracy approaches the challenge of the years with confidence. This truth is not something one can prove by conning the words of a speech or by listening successively to the music of forty bands. It is something one feels in one's bones. And yesterday, we believe, the vast majority of the American people did so feel it."
That could not have been written a year ago. Mr. Truman's speech of yesterday could not have been made a year ago. Indeed, one has only to compare the tone of yesterday's speech with that of his message to Congress of March roth, 1947, proposing the policy of " containment " of Communism and its specific application in aid to Greece and Turkey, and contrast the confident assurance of yesterday with the uncertainty, dismay and apprehension of two years ago, to realise how far and fast America has come in so short a time.
In fact, the chief initial reaction to Mr. Truman's Inaugural, as reported today from Washington, seems to be that it was perhaps • just a little too confident. In this the critics do not appear to be questioning Mr. Truman's judgement on the state of American opinion, or suggesting that in his speech he went further than Ameri- can opinion will accept. Their feeling appears to be that perhaps American public opinion is itself a shade too over-confident at the moment, a little too complacently assured that America will in fact be capable of discharging the immense responsibilities she is taking on, of making good on the tremendous promises she is giving -td, the world in return for the world's rejection of Communism. There are a good many quite thoughtful and sincere people in America, who are neither reactionaries nor isolationists and who unqualifiedly
believe in the ends that America is setting herself to achieve, who' are nevertheless dubious about the pace at which America is trying to achieve them. They feel that America's failure to live up to her promises might be even more psychologically catastrophic, both here
and abroad, than America's failure to make the promises in the first place. Typical of this reaction is the comment quoted by that
shrewd political reporter, Mr. James Reston of the New York Times, from " one of President Truman's own supporters," who said of the Inaugural Address: " It was Teddy Roosevelt's ' Big Stick' policy minus the promise to `speak softly' ; it was Wilson's collective security without Wilson's careful definitions of the obligations of other nations; it was Franklin Roosevelt's cry about ' one third of a nation ill-housed, ill-clad and ill-nourished' applied not only to the United States but to the world."
Mr. Truman certainly did not speak softly about Communism. But he did not mention by name the Government which is the chief representative and exponent of what he called " this false philosophy." He chose rather to use the much vaguer description: " a regime "- " a regime with contrary aims and a totally different concept of life " by which the United States " and other like-minded nations find themselves directly opposed." In talking tough about Communism, Mr. Truman was accurately reflecting the feelings of the American people, but he did not thereby necessarily slam the door on the possibility of reaching an understanding, as between Governments and on the governmental level, with the Soviet • Government— provided of course that the Soviet Government gives concrete
evidence of willingness to discontinue its attempts to proselytise its "false philosophy" abroad.
As regards American participation in the modern variant of Woodrow Wilson's " collective security," it will probably be the Senate rather than the President this time which will concern itself most with spelling out " careful definitions of the obligations of other nations." The great public debate on the projected North Atlantic Security Pact, which by current American custom must precede, or at least accompany, the actual legislative debate, was formally opened a week ago, when the State Department published a lengthy statement, entitled Building the Peace, intended to educate the American public into the reasons and the necessity for engaging the United States in such a pact. Now the President, in his Inaugural, has announced that he hopes " soon to send to the Senate a treaty respecting the North Atlantic Security Plan." There is no doubt whatever that the broad mass of the American people has already accepted in principle the compelling necessity for the North Atlantic Pact, however much it goes counter to the traditional distrust of " permanent " or "entangling " alliances against which Washington and Jefferson warned. But there will certainly be con- siderable controversy and argument over details, especially as regards how far the United States should commit itself in advance to any hypothetical course of action, and as to precisely what commitments should be required of the other participating countries in return for material and moral support from the United States.
Undoubtedly, however, the most interesting, as well as the most tantalising, parts of Mr. Truman's speech were those passages in which he spoke of embarking " on a bold new programme for making the benefits of our scientific advances and industrial progress avail- able for the improvement and growth of under-developed areas," for utilising America's " imponderable resources " of technical know- ledge for the assistance of other peoples, and for fostering American capital investment "in areas needing development." Just what Mr. Truman has in his mind on this is not yet at all clear. What nobody in Washington—except possibly the President himself and a few of his closest advisers—seemed to know yesterday was whether he was merely speaking generally, throwing out the idea of a sort of technological counterpart of the Marshal Plan as a topic for thought and discussion, or whether he had up his sleeve some definite, already-planned project which in due time he would present to the country and to Congress.
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