First to Be Shot

"Pre-press" is what White House aides call the skull-practice sessions they hold with the President, trying to anticipate newsmen's questions and how to answer them. For Harry Truman's first press conference since the news turned bad in Korea, they figured that the big question would be: What about the Republicans' demand for Dean Acheson's head?

Foreign Policy Adviser W. Averell Harriman and Speechwriter George Elsey came prepared with a draft of what to say, but they found that Harry Truman had already scribbled out a few words of his own. He read them, in a bristling tone, to his advisers. They turned to polishing and toning down the plain rhetoric of the President. When it was finished, more than 90 minutes later, the statement was almost pure Harry Truman. The President marched off to read it to 175 reporters.

"So Do I Refuse." "There have been new attacks within the past week against Secretary of State Acheson," he began with a fixed smile. "I have been asked to remove him from office. The authors of this suggestion claim this would be good for the country. How our position in the world would be improved by the retirement of Dean Acheson from public life is beyond me. Mr. Acheson has helped shape and carry out our policy of resistance to Communist imperialism.

"If Communism were to prevail in the world--as it shall not prevail*--Dean Acheson would be one of the first, if not the first, to be shot by the enemies of liberty and Christianity . . . These recent attacks on Mr. Acheson are . . . the same sort of thing that happened to Seward. President Lincoln was asked by a group of Republicans to dismiss Secretary of State Seward. He refused. So do I refuse to dismiss Acheson . . ." When he came to the final sentence, President Truman slapped the manuscript to his desk with the flat of his hand. That, said the gesture, was that.

Unity. President Truman's belated but emphatic defense of Acheson was a signal for the Democrats on Capitol Hill to come to the aid of the party. They had sat back in conspicuous silence during the months of Republican assaults on Dean Acheson. Up rose a man least likely to be accused of sympathy for the Secretary of State or his views--archaic (81), rheumy-eyed Kenneth D. McKellar of Tennessee. "[I] . . . urge each and every one of my colleagues and every American citizen to stay together in this time of trouble," said he. Old Kenneth McKellar could not bring himself to defend Dean Acheson by name, but he reminded the Senate that the President has a right to pick his Cabinet officers and that the Senate had approved all Harry Truman's choices. "Some of them may not do just what we would have them do," said he. "Some of them have made mistakes . . . But let us get together behind our President and our Government."

Next came Arkansas' Fulbright, who also talked of unity--and took care not to praise Dean Acheson. At one point, Maine's Republican Owen Brewster interrupted Fulbright to ask: "Would the Senator . . . challenge the proposition that a very substantial majority of the [Democrats] have privately and repeatedly expressed the opinion that a change in the office of Secretary of State is now wise and desirable?"

"I think that is true," said Bill Fulbright. Later, the Senator from Arkansas made a hurried alteration in the Congressional Record. He had meant to say a majority of Republicans favored Acheson's ouster, he explained.

The speech from a ranking Senate Democrat, extolling the Secretary of State, was still to be heard.

*A phrase added by the advisers.

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.