Evening star., 1950-09-27
By Joseph A. Fox

4 ME SPILL BETWEEN FreSlQent 1Tu-
l. man and James F. Byrnes, which
has bred some ill-humored manifestations
in the past year. is traced to the Presi-
dents conviction that the Secretary of
State Tost his nerve" in dealings with
Soviet Russia, in biography of Mr..
Truman, THE Man of independence"
published today. q. B. Lippincott Co.,
$3.75.)
The author is Jonathan Daniels, editor
of the Raleigh IN. c. News and OBJ
server, who was White House staff
member in both Roosevelt and Truman
administrations, and one of the key men
in the epic Truman campaign for re-
election in 1948.
His airing of situation that may have
an important bearing on the future of
the New Deal-Fair Deal in the rebelliouS
South, where Mr.. Byrnes figures to hold
a top spot as the soon to-be Governor of
South Carolina. confirms the widely held
suspicion that long -smoldering animosity
underlay the wide open break that finally
developed.
Mr.. Byrnes had expected to get the
vice presidency which went to his old
Senate associate, Harry Truman of Mis-
souri,, in 1914, and landed him in the
presidency within a few months. Mr..
Truman had supported the Byrnes can
didacy which developed when Henry
Wallace was shelved, and the South
Carolinian was one of his early choices
when Mr.. Truman started to reconstruct
the cabinet inherited from Franklin D.
Roosevelt.
Politically, Truman owed Byrnes moth
ing; as a man who had received what
Byrnes thought was to be his, he felt
oddly in Byrnes' debt" Mr.. Daniels
writes. I'm the complicated psychology
of American politics, Byrnes could not
escape the feeling that he should be
President, not Truman. Unquestionably,
his opinion was that he was better
qualified for the presidency. He was, he
felt, doing Truman a favor by taking
his toughest job"
Against this backdrop. the relationship
between the Chief Executive and his for
eign affairs chief was fraying before
1945 was ended, according to the biog-
rapher. who quotes the President as hav-
ing told Gen. George c. Marshall, his
peace envoy to China:
IF Byrnes quits me, want you to be
Secretary of State"
In that atmosphere. Secretary Byrnes
went to Moscow in December for the
meeting of foreign ministers. The &C
count continues:
There is no doubt that Truman dates
the break with ByrneS to that Moscow
conference where ByrneS, he believed,
went much too far in accepting the Rus
sian positions with regard to the gov
ernmentS of Bulgaria and other satellite
states. Truman had directly refused any
recognition at Potsdam which did not
insure real free government for these
countries"
The Presidents later st-his-nerve"
barb reflected this. as did further COM
ment attributed to him.
"Byrnes got the real riot act after
Moscow. I told him our policy was not
appeaSement, and not one-way street."
1t was year, however before Secre-
tary Byrnes stepped out. pleading i'll
health.
There was the customary felicitous ex-
change then. for public consumption, but
privately the President told intimates:
He failed miserably as Secretary of
State and ran out on me when the going
was rough, and when I needed him worst.
His bad heart has now left him when
he has found that he made bad guess.
So he and old Baruch have joined the
McCormicks, HearstS and Scripps- How
ards to discredit me. They will not
succeed"
Secretary Of Commerce Wallace, a
Roosevelt cabinet holdover, is bracketed
as another who "felt he ought to be
sitting in the presidential chair which
Truman occupied" To the Presidents
always awkward feeling" about the for
mer Vice President is linked the chain
of events which resulted ultimately in
the summary dismissal of Mr.. Wallace
in September, 1916.
The President was getting Exceed
ingly uneasy about the go-easy with
Russia doctrine the Commerce Secretary
was preaching, but felt that such views
represented those of "a large segment of
Americans" He also hoped to bring
the Wallace viewpoint more into line
with his own.
When naked blunder" by the Pres
ident led him to give off-hand approval
to the well-remembered Wallace speech
in Madison Square Garden, with which
he was not familiar, and which ran
against administration policy the Pres
ident "felt imposed upon" There was
the further question of impairment of
American prestige abroad, promptly
raised by Secretary Byrnes from Paris.
In the backing and filling that went
on then as the administration sought to
"straighten the thing out" the President
it is recounted, asserted grimly that Mr.
Wallace issued statement dramatically
opposed to what he had agreed to do.
The next daV I fired him -
AS Mr.. Truman, slowly finding his
way, sought to extricate himself from
that mudhole"-his own description of
the unhappy cabinet bequeathed by Pres
ident Roosevelt-his choice of War Mo-
bilizer Fred M. Vinson to succeed Treas