The Wilmington morning star., 1945-10-11
Tr11n,an;s Background
Nv ARTHUR KROCk

Nv ARTHUR KROCK
BERRYVILLE, Va.-These are very critical
DAYS in government and IN the centers OF in
dustry and the President IS spenomg several
of them away from his desk. By some this
is denlored. But it is possible that Mr.. Truman
NAV gain a certain refreshment and mental
nerspective from the kind OF journey he is
making which will help him to see the acute
problems before him in b r a outlines, in
terms of the country as whole instead of
from the special angles on which the pressure
groups would concentrate his view.
This benefit of travel for the President, who
necessarily in Washington is surrounded by
politicians and special pleaders and is remote
from the American people, must nave suggest
ed itself to many who saw Mr.. Truman riding
through village streets in the Southern country
of his ancestors, mingling with people whose
folkways are more familiar to him than those
anywhere else in the United States and re-
turning to behavior as an average citizen in
so far as President can. It certainly came
strongly to the mind of this observer during
Mr. Truman's visit to Clarke County, Virginia.
The President rode northwest from Washing
ton to Berryville on highway which Union
and Confederate troops long disputed, the paw
ed successor of the trail over part of which
Washington guided Braddock to Fort Duque
she. He acted as best man for Justice Bennett
C. Clark his former Senate colleague, in ''the
Little Cathedral of the Valley Grace church in
Berryville at wedding as simple as those at
independence, Mo-, where Mr.. Truman must
have attended a good many. When the cere
mony was over the President stood awhile in
the old churchyard in the kindly presence of
the northern Virginia town and country people,
and he must have been sufficiently perceptive
to feel the hope and trust in him to lead the
nation out of its difficulties which war implicit
in the greeting they gave him.
Here he saw a population which is self-re-
liant-farmers who do not strike, despite their
incessant labor, the high prices of what they
buy and their meager earnings; workers in
the town who bear the heaviest brunt of price
rises because no special law administrative
favoritism runs in their interest. And these
people saw a man of their own native strain
in whose intention and ability to insist on
common solution of the troubles of the whole
country they still have faith, and revealed it.
The President left the churchyard and rode
up the Charles Town Pike to the wedding le-
ception at Balclutha, the home of the bride
groom's sister and brother-in-law-the latter
James NJ Thomson, like Mr.. Truman, the son
of a Confederate soldier, the former a daugh-
ter of that Speaker Clark who narrowly missed
being one of the honor guests predecessors in
the White House dor the Speaker, too, carried
the majority of a Democratic National Con-
vention at one stage Of the balloting in 1922.
At this small function, according to the kindly
gossip of county neighbors who were there, the
President at first hand extended the impression
he had created on the village and roadside
watchers - of a Chief Executive who knows
what the nation means, how interviewer are
all its economic and social interests, and how
none can be subordinated to another if the
general welfare is to be served.
This was the word the neighbors brought to
Limestone, the farm by the Shenandoah to
lyhi ch iS y1riv
legged briefly to return And this was the word
expressed in more joyful and adrniring tones
by those neighbors, the general buffers, wait
resSes and yardmen of the community, who
had been in the kitchen or yard at Balclutha
when the President shook the hands of every
one.
It is all, Of course, what a good politician
would do, and the President is a good one
| It was also what kind, thoughtful and simple
man would do, and the President is those
things, too But on the people of Clarke Coun-
ty, and undoubtedly on those in Arkansas
Missouri and Tennessee who saw him later
in his journey, Mr.. Truman impresses himself
as something more. A President who has a
vivid and enduring sense of the rights and
needs Of the whole American people. Having
seen and noted him, these particular citizens
will be the more deeply disappointed if he
! does not live up to the estimate he created.
In the old Green myth Antaeus drew his
| strength from the earth, and when, in the
wrestling bouts to which he challenged every
stranger they bore him to the ground, he arose
refreshed and uncomfortable. But along came
Heracles, strategist as well as pachyderm.
He held Antaeus high in his arms throughout
the match until the champion, deprived of the
contact with native soil on which he depended
to outstay all challengers, weakened and cried
enough.
1t may be that here is a parable for the
President in which it will not be too difficult
to substitute h names for Hercales and
Mother Earth. If So perhaps it may be hoped
that current pressure on Mr.. Truman, unlike
that Of Heracles in the myth, will not prevail
if the President refreshes himself, as he has
been doing in the last few days, by getting
back among the people and walking on the
American earth and in the streets of the little
towns. Should that be the effect, and here in
Clarke County good many think so, the alb
sence from Washington will be well spent
| New York Times
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