Affection and Trust: The Personal Correspondence of Harry S. Truman and Dean Acheson, 1953-1971

by David McCullough

  Page 260. Your story about Jim Wade is a good one, but I ask you to reconsider the last sentence, that adds to it that later on, when you were President, you made Jim Wade Collector of Customs in St. Louis. This is the only reference you make in the volume which I have read about minor appointments. It would give the uninformed reader the quite unjustified impression that political patronage and the reward of political supporters was your major consideration in making appointments. This, of course, is not true. When you compare the impression which this leaves with your discussion on page 262 of your concern about special interests, inside influence, etc., there is a very sharp contrast. I suggest you drop the last sentence on page 260. [Truman staff marginalia: “done.”]

  Page 268–269. Can’t the material from the middle of page 268 through the first full paragraph of page 269 be greatly compressed? The recitation of these formal appearances slows the narrative and delays your getting into the major work of the Truman Committee.

  Pages 260–300. These pages cover a discussion of the Truman Committee’s work. I think that these pages need editing, both to shorten them and to concentrate them on the main achievements of the Committee and to correct some erroneous impressions which they leave. Wouldn’t it be well to start out with a better orientation of your approach and that of the Committee? This might be done by bringing out more fully than you do your tribute to the great part played by the industrial organization and power of the United States in winning the war and to the vast majority of patriotic industrialists, both those who stayed with their factories and those who came to Washington, who transformed American industry for war production. It could be brought out that this produced, inevitably, confusion and duplication and waste, and that the Committee’s purpose was to help in overcoming these quite inevitable evils as quickly as possible. Since you have to talk about errors and mistakes which were made, you have to avoid giving the impression that everyone except the Committee and its staff was stupid or venal. Of course, you do not mean to give this impression, but it emerges, and I think could be easily remedied by having your staff go over these pages with a red pencil.

  Page 302. In the second paragraph, I think the specific reference to [Senator Owen] Brewster and [Senator Arthur] Vandenberg should be removed or elaborated and proved. Couldn’t this sentence be altered to say that, whenever any member of the Committee showed signs of yielding to the temptation of bringing Congress into control of the conduct of the war, you were able by private talks to get the work of the Committee back on the rails without any crisis arising?

  Page 307. Here you are again talking about your votes. Again I suggest the same treatment discussed above of listing them for the purpose of indicating your general point of view. For instance, in the paragraph toward the bottom of the page, where you discuss a bill of 1941 exempting taxes on income from state and city bonds, I do not think that the analogy to federal bonds is relevant in this discussion. The question is whether the federal sovereignty can tax the bonds, or indeed the salaries or other property, of the various state sovereignties, or vice versa.

  Page 312. I suggest leaving out the last sentence of the second paragraph. In the preceding sentence you record that FDR has asked Frank Walker [Democratic National Committee Chair from 1943 to 1944] to notify Byrnes of his decision that he wanted you as Vice President. You then say, “I believe, therefore, that Byrnes knew that the President had named me at the time he called me in Independence and asked me to nominate him at the convention.” The narrative does not need this sentence, and I think that it makes a specific and unnecessarily bitter accusation against Byrnes. If Frank Walker had notified him, then he knew, if Frank Walker had not done so, perhaps he didn’t know. Is it necessary for you to take a position?

  Page 314. Is my memory correct that you once told me that after the telephone talk with President Roosevelt you then had a talk with Jimmy Byrnes and told him what the President had required of you. If this is so, it is an important fact which should be included. But I can easily be wrong about this.

  Page 324, 5th line. In the fifth line you refer to the President functioning as “Commander-in-Chief of the United States.” I think ill-disposed persons might have some fun with this reference. Section 2 of Article II of the Constitution says, “The President shall be Commander in Chief of the Army and Navy of the United States, and of the Militia of the several States, when called into the actual Service of the United States.”

  Page 327. Has your reference to “Mussolini’s puppet Socialist Republic” been checked?

  Page 328. At the bottom of the page you refer again to the Himmler proposal, which is discussed in a good deal of detail on pages 147(d) and (e).

  Page 342 and 343. This is very good, and exactly the sort of exposition of your own wisdom and views which I hope to see more of in the next volume.

  Page 345 et seq. I suppose that this narrative of your discussion with Churchill about the differences of opinion as to the course of American military advance after the collapse of the German Armies has been carefully checked with Churchill’s last volume. As I recall it, he makes quite a point of this, and I only suggest it to be sure that nothing has been overlooked.

  Page 371. In talking about the decision to curtail lend-lease presented to you by [Leo T.] Crowley and [Joseph C.] Grew, is it necessary or excessively honest [Truman staff annotation: “ly” crossed out, “y” added to “honest,” thus “excessive honesty”] for you to say in the last sentence of the second paragraph, “I reached for my pen, and without reading the document, I signed it.”? I suppose the answer turns on whether Crowley and Grew had already fully explained to you the contents of the document. If they had done so, and I am sure that they would do so honestly, then is it necessary to say that you did not read the document? Perhaps the real heart of the matter lies not in not reading the document, but in not taking more time for reflection and for discussion with others, who might have presented different views. If I am right about this, I think you could quite properly leave out the phrase, “without reading the document.”

  On the rest of this page and on the next page or two you give the impression that the real impact of your decision was on the Russians, and that if more time had been taken it would not appear as if somebody had been deliberately snubbed. It seems to me that the real impact of this was on the British, and that a great many of their later financial troubles came from the very severe foreign exchange pressure which the curtailing of lend-lease placed upon them at a time when they were unable to revive their exports. I think it would be wise to reconsider this and perhaps rewrite these pages from that point of view. So far as the Russians were concerned, I think the trouble was merely a matter of appearances. So far as the British were concerned, it went to the very heart of their economic life.

  Page 396. In the middle of the page please eliminate the words “native governments” and substitute “national governments.” These people resent the word “native.”

  Page 400. Is the third paragraph about Churchill’s motives correct or necessary. I do not remember the situation, but from the preceding narrative it does not necessarily appear that he was motivated in the least by the desire to maintain British influence. It seems rather that he was urging that action should be taken in the Adriatic before the situation got out of hand. The narrative seems to me somewhat better without this paragraph in.

  All of these pages of criticism must give you the impression that my whole attitude is critical. This it most certainly is not. I think the book is good, interesting, and, as I said before, will give vast numbers of people an understanding of you which they could not have in any other way. I have necessarily directed myself to things that seem to need change.

  I am now at work on the second volume. I find much less to comment on, and shall hope to get something off to you about it by the end of the week.

  With warm regards.

  Most sincerely,

  Dean

  P.S. Since writing the above, I have
come across two matters in the second volume which relate to the first one.

  First, I note that on page 530 in listing the Cabinet you refer to Miss Frances Perkins, which supports my theory as to her proper title.

  Second, on page 535 you mention the appointment of Jimmy Byrnes. In the third paragraph of that page, talking about it, I think what you say is inconsistent with what you say on page 36 of the first volume. Page 535 seems to support my recollection set forth above regarding what you told me. I think you will want to read these two pages together and bring them into harmony.

  Acheson continues his critique of Year of Decisions, the first volume of Truman’s memoirs. His reference to “the second volume” indicates the second bound portion of the Year of Decisions manuscript.

  June 24, 1955

  Dear Mr. President:

  I have now read the second volume through Chapter 28, that is, through page 758. I am getting off this letter to you today so that you will have most of my comments on the two volumes well before June 30th. In fact, on the second volume I have very few comments. It is most interesting and well put together.

  On this volume the main concern which you might have is one on which I can not be of any help. This is whether you have taken into account the other material in the field, such as the books of Byrnes, Churchill, and Eisenhower, as well as the voluminous documents which you yourself have and many of which you quote.

  Page 487. You begin again the discussion about the withdrawal of our troops to their zone of occupation and the difference of opinion with Churchill which arose about this. A good many of the telegrams on this subject appear in the first volume of the manuscript, which I have now returned to you. I think you will find these on page 345 and the following pages. Without the first volume before me, I cannot recall whether there is a sound reason for dividing the discussion and the documents in this way. Might it not be better to bring all of the earlier discussion into Chapter 19?

  The discussion in Chapter 19 then proceeds to the settlement or lack of settlement of our rights in Berlin and thus involves, although it does not discuss, the reasons and responsibility for the nebulous situation which resulted, and which later somewhat obscured the legal questions involved in the blockade of Berlin. It may be that this question of who should have done what and when about our rights of access to Berlin is still up in the air where perhaps it has to remain. At any rate I did not get any new, clearer ideas about this from your narrative in Chapter 19. I think to the reader of this narrative Churchill seems to come off best. He appears to have sensed the need for maintaining our forward positions and of [for] delaying the fulfillment of our obligation to retire to the zone of occupation until the Russians had fulfilled their obligations and made satisfactory arrangements. Our position impresses the reader as being somewhat rigid—that is, we had agreed to retire and, therefore, we were going to retire—without full consideration of the necessity for reciprocal fulfillment of obligations on the other side. I have no suggestions to make about this, because I do not know enough about the facts. From Marshall’s telegram on page 501 it looks as though Eisenhower did about what he was directed to do. But again I do not know. I merely think that this should be noted and perhaps carefully reviewed by your staff and you.

  My remaining comments are few and minor.

  Page 532. Here you recount your first meetings with Miss Perkins at the time you were presiding judge of the Jackson County Court. I think you have already done this at about page 150 of the first volume.

  Page 538. You say that today “there are nine members of the Cabinet.” Isn’t it true that the addition of Health, Education and Welfare brings the number to ten?

  Page 539. It seems to me that the second paragraph on this page rather over-simplifies your relations with Cabinet members and gives the impression that “everything” was put on the table at Cabinet meetings. Your main point on this page is the difference between your practice and that of President Roosevelt, and this is very true indeed. But I think it might be well to expand this paragraph, to make the reader aware that many important questions were thrashed out at meetings of less than the full Cabinet; for instance, in the reprint of my Yale Review article of October which I sent to you, in discussing the NSC, I point out that this is not an operating agency with powers of decision, but is merely a meeting of the President with certain selected members of the Cabinet whose functions relate more particularly to national security. This same method of discussing matters with selected members was frequently employed by you.

  One outstanding example, which you will undoubtedly come to later, was in the relief of General MacArthur, where you selected Marshall, Harriman, Bradley, and me for that discussion. The fact remains, as you well bring out, that in all these cases the decision is the decision of the President, the Cabinet officers acting merely as advisers.

  Page 561. On the third line from the bottom, in referring to the people with you at the table at Potsdam, you mention “Davies.” I suggest that you identify him as Joseph Davies, the former Ambassador to the Soviet Union.

  Page 712. In the last half of the last sentence of the second paragraph, you say “and the American people, their President included, wanted nothing more in that summer of 1945, than to end the fighting and bring the boys back home.” This seems to me an unfortunate sentence. You do not mean it literally. As this whole part of the book brings out, there were things which you wanted more than to end the fighting and to bring the boys back home. These were to end the fighting under proper conditions and to do your best to bring about a stable and just peace. Might it be better to say “and the American people, their President included, were unwilling to engage in new military operations unless the national interests of the United States clearly demanded them”?

  These are all the suggestions which I have up to Chapter 30. I shall finish the volume over the weekend and write you on Monday as to whether or not I have any further suggestions.

  Let me say again how much I like this second volume. All involved have done a very fine job indeed in writing it.

  With warm regards.

  Sincerely yours,

  Dean

  Acheson concludes his critique of the second portion of Year of Decisions. At the end of this letter he congratulates Truman on his June 24 speech at a commemorative session of the United Nations at the Opera House in San Francisco, where the United Nations Charter had been signed ten years earlier. “The United Nation,” Truman said, “is a beacon of hope to a world that has no choice but to live together or to die together.”

  June 27, 1955

  Dear Mr. President:

  Over the weekend I finished the second manuscript volume of your book and continued to think that it is a very good job indeed. My comments are very few and only one of them seems to have any real importance.

  Page 776. The last paragraph at the bottom of the page. Wouldn’t it be better to eliminate the first two sentences of this paragraph and begin with the third sentence, starting “Winston Churchill had on several occasions, etc.”? The first two sentences say that part of the British economic difficulties came from the fact that they had come to depend on lend-lease and that it was a very painful operation to sever this tie. The British had come to depend on American economic assistance because they had to. The war had cut off their exports which were their principal earning power. If Britain were to play her essential role in the Grand Alliance, she would have to have assistance until she could reconvert from war to civilian production and regain her export markets. As you point out, the British loan was a recognition of this and the Marshall Plan later on was an even greater one. The two sentences which I criticize give the impression that the British found it more convenient to live on our help and that it was painful to them to cut it off. I think that it was really more painful to receive it than to cut it off, and these observations have nothing to do with the story which the remainder of the paragraph and the following pages bring out.

  Page 785, se
cond paragraph, last two sentences. Here again, wouldn’t it be better to eliminate these two sentences and join the first sentence of this paragraph with the last paragraph on the page? The first of these two sentences is not very clear, because I do not know just what you mean by the sterling area resuming “trade on a multilateral basis.” The sterling area was conducting trade within the area on a multilateral basis. The difficulty arose in trade between the sterling area and the dollar area. Here the sterling area had to limit dollar purchases to the most important items and this, of course, resulted in discriminations. The dollar loan eased this situation but did not eliminate it, as the last sentence in the paragraph seems to suggest. In fact there were specific provisions in the loan agreement which permitted the continuance of discrimination under certain circumstances. It is true, and I think the last paragraph brings this out, that the dollar loan was intended to ease the situation and to enable the British to move gradually towards its total elimination, a condition at which they have not yet arrived.

  Page 798. This page raises a delicate situation, which I mention with hesitation, but I know you will not take offense. Any autobiography necessitates the continual use of the first person pronoun. It is worth some ingenuity to reduce the occurrence of this, and through a large part of the book it isn’t noticeable at all. This page, however, brings the problem out rather forcibly. The pronoun occurs eleven times on this one page. I mention this not for this page alone but in order that you might have it in mind when you have a final review of the whole manuscript for style.

  Page 808. On line four the Brookings Institution is referred to as the Brookings Institute.

  Page 898–902. These pages contain the crucial part of the crisis with Jimmy Byrnes over the Moscow Conference. At the bottom of page 898 you refer to the substance of the errors which Byrnes had committed at Moscow, and this begins with Rumania and Bulgaria. “We had agreed,” you say, “to sit down with Rumania and Bulgaria to write peace treaties,” whereas they had violated all decent standards about elections. Again you say, “Yet Byrnes had agreed to let the Russians have their way about peace settlements with these nations.” Later on you mention his failure to take a vigorous attitude in regard to Iran.