The New York Times accused the administration of unprecedented ineptness and of caving in to base material concerns:
A land of milk and honey now flows with oil, and the homeland of three great religions is having its fate decided by expediency without a sign of the spiritual and ethical considerations which should be determining at least in that part of the world. Ancient Palestine was once described as “not the land of philosophers but the home of prophets.” It would take a prophet sitting on a rapidly spinning turntable to have foreseen the course which our Government has pursued during the last few months.
The White House was deluged with letters, telegrams, and petitions to the President filled with alarm and outrage over such “whimsical and cynical action,” such “vacillating” and “disastrous” policy. Nor were they all from Jews or Jewish organizations.
“This change can mean nothing but the complete annihilation of that wonderful home loving race of people who have demonstrated the wonders they can accomplish in that country which actually before God and man belongs to them,” wrote a municipal court judge from Council Bluffs, Iowa, named John P. Tinley. “They must not be betrayed. For God’s sake and the sake of humanity do something to correct this terrible blunder.” “Oh, how could you stoop so low!” declared Professor Samuel A. Sloan of the Carnegie Institute of Technology in Pittsburgh. “Was your action of Friday a ‘Gentleman’s Agreement’ with England and the Arab interests? This revolting move must and should be the death of the United Nations…. Won’t you stop trying to be a statesman and act like a human being!”
For Eddie Jacobson in Kansas City, March 19 was “Black Friday.” People enraged over the news kept calling him all day. How did he feel now that his friend Truman had turned out to be a traitor to the Jewish people? “There wasn’t one…who expressed faith and confidence in the word of the President of the United States,” remembered Jacobson, who felt so heartsick he had to take to his bed for the remainder of the weekend.
Not until Monday, when he was back at his store, did Jacobson hear from Chaim Weizmann, who called personally to tell him not to despair. Weizmann, who had more right than anyone to feel betrayed, was certain the President had meant what he said when they met. Jacobson must not forget, Weizmann stressed, that his friend Harry S. Truman was the single most powerful man in the world, and it was up to Jacobson to keep the White House door open.
Truman’s first news of what had happened at the United Nations came in the morning papers, Saturday, the 20th, the day after Austin’s speech. At 7:30 A.M. Truman was on the phone to Clifford at his home, telling him to get down to the White House immediately.
This morning I find that the State Dept. has reversed my Palestine policy [Truman wrote in a fury on his calendar]. The first I know about it is what I see in the papers! Isn’t that hell? I’m now in the position of a liar and a double-crosser. I never felt so in my life.
There are people on the 3rd and 4th levels of the State Dept. who have always wanted to cut my throat. They are succeeding in doing it…
Still unable to accept the idea that it might be Marshall who was opposing his position, or who misunderstood his position, he saw the State Department itself, “the striped pants boys,” as the perpetrators of his troubles.
“Truman was in his office as disturbed as I have ever seen him,” Clifford remembered. “ ‘I don’t understand this,’ he said. ‘How could this have happened! I assured Chaim Weizmann…he must think I’m a shitass.’”
“The President’s statement that the action [at the U.N.] had come without his knowledge seemed incredible,” wrote Eben Ayers after an emergency staff meeting. “The political effect may be terrifically bad and it seemed impossible to believe that those responsible for the action could not have realized the reaction that would result.”
Calling a press conference in Los Angeles that evening, Secretary Marshall said he regarded trusteeship over Palestine as “the wisest course.” He himself had recommended it to the President, Marshall said, and the President had approved. The statement was brief, unadorned, accurate, and helped Truman not at all.
Marshall flew home the following day, Sunday the 21st, and on Monday the 22nd, at the White House he and Loy Henderson met with a calmer, more composed President, who now, in obvious deference to Marshall, said he had given approval to the idea of trusteeship as an intermediate step, and that it was only the “timing” of Austin’s speech that had upset him.
But as he came out of the meeting, Truman was heard to mutter, “This gets us nowhere.”
The fact was he had also specified earlier that nothing be done before the General Assembly that could be taken as a retreat from the partition plan. Further, he had insisted he be shown Austin’s speech in advance. “Send final draft of Austin’s remarks for my consideration,” he had directed on February 22, which clearly the State Department had not done. As Charlie Ross observed in his diary, “No pronouncement of the momentous nature of Austin’s should have been made without prior consultation with the P[resident] or someone on his staff.” But as Ross also observed, it would be unthinkable now for Truman to disavow what Austin had said.
Though Truman made none of these points to Marshall, he felt them acutely, as he felt still that it was those below Marshall who were determined to sabotage his policy, the “striped pants conspirators,” as he now referred to them in a letter to his sister.
At a press conference, speaking anything but plainly, he said trusteeship did not necessarily “prejudice the character of the final political settlement.” Was he then in favor still of partition at some future date? “That is what I am trying to say here as plainly as I can.”
He was straddling, obfuscating. He knew it, the reporters knew it, and he felt miserable. “It was one of the worst messes of my father’s career,” Margaret would attest, “and he could do nothing but suffer.”
Eleanor Roosevelt wrote to submit her resignation as a delegate to the United Nations, while two of her sons, Franklin, Jr., and Elliott, joined a disparate but growing number of worried Democrats who wanted to draft General Eisenhower for the presidential nomination.
Truman refused to accept Mrs. Roosevelt’s resignation and paid no attention to her sons.
On April 9, writing to the President from New York, Chaim Weizmann, after thanking Truman for “the personal kindness which you have so often shown me” and for “the sympathetic interest which you have constantly devoted to the cause of our people,” stressed the gravity of the moment and Truman’s own historic role in it:
The choice for our people, Mr. President, is between statehood and extermination. History and providence have placed this issue in your hands and I am confident that you will yet decide it in the spirit of moral law.
On Saturday afternoon, April 11, to avoid the few reporters hanging about the White House, Eddie Jacobson slipped in through the East Wing. Again Truman reaffirmed—and “very strongly,” according to Jacobson—what he had told Weizmann. Moreover, he now assured Jacobson he would recognize the new Jewish state. “And to this,” wrote Jacobson later, “he agreed with his whole heart.” Harry Truman had made up his mind.
As the likelihood of war breaking out in Palestine grew more ominous and the time before the British withdrawal grew shorter, tension at the White House increased measurably and the strain on the President himself did not go unnoticed. “The President,” wrote David Lilienthal after a meeting on April 21, “looked worn—as I haven’t seen him look since I have known him.”
There was never enough time. There was always more than one reasonable, prudent course of action to take. Nothing seemed simple.
At Griffith Stadium, throwing out the first ball at the start of the new baseball season—at a Senators-Yankees game—the ambidextrous President seemed hesitant even about which arm to use, then threw with his left.
News accounts described him as “whirling” about Washington. “Not once, but twice,” Truman had “tootled off” to the National Gallery to
see a collection of paintings by the old masters discovered by the American Third Army in a salt mine in Germany. He attended the Gridiron dinner, another rite of spring, and the funeral of a veteran White House clerk, Maurice C. Latta, who had been employed since 1898. From a flag-festooned platform on Constitution Avenue, he reviewed an Army Day parade and later at the White House welcomed the very nervous, young Prince Regent of Belgium with a state dinner. At the nearby Loew’s Capitol Theater, accompanied by Bess and Margaret, he saw the premiere of Frank Capra’s new movie, State of the Union, starring Spencer Tracy and Katharine Hepburn, which gave him a lift as nothing had in a long while. “It is a scream,” he wrote to Mary Jane. “If you get a chance go see it. It gives the Republicans hell and, believe it or not, is favorable to your brother.”
The latest Gallup Poll reported his approval rating at only 36 percent. Republicans were overjoyed, Democrats and the liberal press increasingly downcast. “Must it be Truman?” asked The Nation. “Truman Should Quit,” said the front cover of The New Republic. “Harry Truman has none of the qualities demanded by the presidency.” He was “colorless,” “a little man” with a “known difficulty in understanding the printed word.” In The New York Times, Arthur Krock wrote grimly:
When he [Truman] vetoed what he called the “rich man’s” tax bill, which Congress had substituted for his own “poor man’s” bill, numerous Democrats in Congress jumped on the bandwagon to override the veto.
The Democratic Party is imperiling the President’s effectiveness as no major party in this country has done since the Republican radicals impeached Andrew Johnson…. A President whose defeat at the next poll is generally prophesied faces difficulties in performing his office that conceivably bring disaster…. At this writing, the President’s influence is weaker than any President’s has been in modern history.
Early in May, in advance of what was to be a crucial White House strategy conference on Palestine, Truman asked Clark Clifford to prepare the case for immediate recognition of the new Jewish state, which as yet had no name. He was to prepare himself, Truman told Clifford, as though presenting a case before the Supreme Court. “You will be addressing all of us present, of course,” Truman said, “but the person I really want you to convince is Marshall.”
Truman, as he told Clifford, was inclined to think that Marshall was opposed to such recognition. But this had nothing to do with Truman’s regard for the general. Nor was there the least question about Marshall’s own feelings. “I want you to know,” wrote Marshall in a personal birthday greeting to the President on May 8, “that I am keenly aware of the remarkable loyalty you have given me. In return, I can only promise you to do my best and assure you of my complete loyalty and trust in you.”
At a private birthday party for the President, Marshall had been still more emphatic, expressing his regard for the President in words no one present would forget. Indeed, it was one of the greatest tributes ever paid to Harry Truman. The party, at the nearby F Street Club, was given by Attorney General Tom Clark for some forty guests, including the President and Mrs. Truman, and marked one of the rare times that Marshall and his wife accepted an invitation to dine out in Washington. Clark and John Snyder each rose after dinner to offer toasts. Then, unexpectedly, Marshall stood up, pushed his chair out of the way, and leaning forward with his hands on the table began to speak, his expression very serious. Marshall, as everyone present was well aware, never complimented the people with whom he worked. It was not his way.
“The full stature of this man,” he said, his eyes on Truman, “will only be proven by history, but I want to say here and now that there has never been a decision made under this man’s administration, affecting policies beyond our shores, that has not been in the best interest of this country. It is not the courage of these decisions that will live, but the integrity of the man.”
Truman, his face flushed, rose slowly to respond but was unable to speak. The silence in the room was stunning. He stood with his arms half outstretched trying to compose himself. Finally he could only gesture to Marshall and say, “He won the war,” but he spoke with such simplicity and feeling that many guests were crying.
The meeting in the President’s office on the afternoon of May 12 began at four o’clock, just two days and two hours before the British mandate in Palestine was to expire.
Present were Marshall, Robert Lovett, and two of their State Department aides, Robert McClintock and Fraser Wilkins; Clifford, Niles, and Matt Connelly. Saying little, they took seats around Truman’s desk, Marshall and Lovett on the President’s left, with McClintock and Fraser just behind, Clifford sitting directly in front of the President, with Niles and Connelly to his left. Truman made a few preliminary remarks, in which he said nothing about recognition of Palestine, then turned to Marshall, who asked Lovett to present the case for trusteeship. Lovett spoke at some length, during which Marshall intervened briefly to report that during a recent conversation with Moshe Shertok of the Jewish Agency, he, Marshall, had warned that militarily the Jews were embarked on a very risky venture in Palestine, and should the tide turn against them, there was nothing to guarantee help from the United States.
Truman then called on Clifford, who for the first time mentioned recognition, proposing that the United States make the move quickly before the Soviet Union did. The United States should not even wait until the new Jewish state was declared but announce American recognition the very next day, May 13.
“As I talked,” remembered Clifford, “I noticed the thunder clouds gathering—Marshall’s face getting redder and redder.”
“This is just straight politics,” Marshall said. “I don’t even understand why Clifford is here. This is not a political meeting.”
“General,” Truman answered softly, “he is here because I asked him to be here.”
Clifford continued with his statement, speaking for perhaps fifteen minutes. He was calm, orderly, and unhurried, his rich voice, as always, beautifully modulated, one clear, perfectly structured sentence flowing smoothly, flawlessly after another. (“I had really prepared!” he would say, remembering the moment a lifetime later.) But Clifford was also twenty-six years younger than Marshall—and new to the experience of great power and large world decisions. Marshall’s prestige was a palpable presence in the room and made especially memorable, especially intimidating, by his anger. He sat glaring at Clifford the entire time. Possibly it was Clifford’s manner that upset Marshall, who was deeply worried about the world.
Recognition of the new Jewish state, Clifford said, would be wholly consistent with what had been the President’s policy from the beginning. It would be an act of humanity, “everything this country should represent.” The murder of 6 million Jews by the Nazis had been the worst atrocity of all time. Every thoughtful human being must feel some responsibility for the survivors, who, unlike others in Europe, had no place to go. He explained the Balfour Declaration. He cited lines from Deuteronomy verifying the Jewish claim to a Palestine homeland.
Behold, I have set the land before you: go in and possess the land which the Lord swear unto your fathers, Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, to give unto them and to their seed after them.
There was no real alternative to the partition of Palestine, he said, or to recognition by the United States, since no postponement of the kind imagined by the State Department would ever be tolerated by the Jews. A separate Jewish state was inevitable. It would come to pass in a matter of days. “No matter what the State Department or anybody thinks, we are faced with the actual fact that there is to be a Jewish state.” To think otherwise was unrealistic.
Lovett spoke again. To recognize a Jewish state prematurely, before its boundaries were even known or government established, would be buying a pig-in-a-poke. He produced a file of intelligence reports indicating that numbers of Jewish immigrants to Palestine were Communists or Soviet agents. The entire matter should remain a U.N. problem, Lovett argued. The United Nations was struggling to determine the futur
e government in Palestine, and this at the specific urging of the United States. Any premature, ill-advised recognition of the new state would be disastrous to American prestige in the United Nations and appear only as “a very transparent” bid for Jewish votes in November.
On this note, Marshall broke in, speaking gravely and with all the weight of his reputation, his anger just barely in control.
Clifford’s suggestions were wrong, Marshall said. Domestic political considerations must not determine foreign policy. At stake was “the great office of the President.” Indeed, said Marshall, looking directly at Truman, if the President were to follow Clifford’s advice, and if in the elections in November, he, Marshall, were to vote, he would vote against the President.
It was an extraordinary rebuke for Truman—“the sharpest rebuke ever for him,” Clifford felt certain—coming as it did from Marshall, “the great one of the age,” whose presence in his administration gave Truman such pride and feeling of confidence.
“That brought the meeting to a grinding halt. There was really a state of shock. The President, I think, was struck dumb by it,” Clifford would say, trying years later to evoke the feeling in the room. “There was this awful, total silence.”
Yet Truman showed no sign of emotion. His expression, serious from the start, changed not at all. He only raised his hand and said he was fully aware of the difficulties and dangers involved, as well as the political risks, which he himself would run. He was inclined to agree with General Marshall, but thought it best they all sleep on the matter.
Marshall and his retinue departed, Marshall refusing even to look at Clifford, who, seething within, began gathering up his papers. It was Marshall’s “righteous goddamn Baptist tone” that was so infuriating, he would later tell Jonathan Daniels—Marshall “didn’t know his ass from a hole in the ground.” The President, Clifford could only conclude, had agreed with Marshall in order not to embarrass the general in front of the others.
David McCullough Library E-book Box Set Page 493