SECOND TERM

New Zealand Listener, Volume 35, Issue 889, 17 August 1956, Page 14

SECOND TERM

YEARS OF TRIAL AND HOPE: the Truman Memoirs, Vol. 2; -Hodder and Stoughton, English price 30/-. ME: TRUMAN, like all authors who break their story in halves, has had to compete with himself in his second volume, and has not been wholly successful. To begin with, it was more exciting to him personally to find himself "riding a tiger" without warning or preparation than occupying the same seat, when he had more knowledge and experience. In the second place, the tiger went into wilder places during the first ride, and the spectator is aware of the difference. But if it is a little less thrilling to restore order than to fight for survival, it is the same Harry Truman in both situations-cool, shrewd, plainspoken, and clear-headed. He was sometimes dull and flat in his first volume, and in his second he is too often platitudinous. But he is always sensible; always clear and direct and honest. He can give way, but he can’t be bullied or bluffed. His calm acceptance of his role as the leader of the leading nation of the world I find simple rather than naive; childlike, and almost childish. But it is better than affected modesty. The war did leave the United States the richest and strongest of the surviving world Powers, and its people did ask Harry Truman to lead it for another four years. It was better to say simply, "Thank you. I will not fail you," than

to pretend that he did not want the job and was taking.it only because it would be graceless to refuse. If this is not the story of a great President or a great man, it is the story of a strong President and of a solid American who rose to a great occasion. Nor is it the case that he has nothing new fo say in his second volume. His three chapters about the Palestine problem, for example, will. not satisfy nonAmerican readers, but they explain with great clearness why America wanted to open Palestine to all the Jews who asked to go there and why this so annoyed Britain. But the most revealing of the international chapters are those dealing with China. If we still suppose that America was flat-footed in China, that Washington lost to Moscow through arrogance, ignorance, and inexperience, we may have a different notion when we have read the author’s fifth and sixth chapters. And who but Harry Truman could have written the

astonishing account of the Democratic Convention that accepted him in Philadelphia in 1948 after keeping him waiting in a dressing-room for four hours ona "hot, clammy night," while delegates argued and shouted on the floor above him, or would have filled those four hours with a 33-page meditation on the last 150 years of America’s political

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