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But he saved his angriest words to rawhide the House of Representatives for cutting $4.7 billion out of the $51 billion defense appropriation for 1953 (TIME, April 21). It was a shrewdly timed outburst, designed to show Harry Truman, though he himself had sharply slashed the armed forces' budget, as the fearless champion of adequate defense.
Turnip Day. "How did the House of Representatives decide to make a cut like this?" he asked at a dedication ceremony for a new AMVETS headquarters in Washington. "Did they say, 'We have been over the whole defense program and we think you ought to plan something smaller?' No, no, they didn't say anything like that. They said, 'This program is all right—but we won't provide the money to put it over! . . .' They just said, 'Cut it—and don't bother us with details.' I wish I had the whole outfit right here before me now ... If I have to call a special Turnip Day session** every day from now until the first of January, we're going to get this thing done and it's going to be done right.. .
"This nation is still in deadly peril. We have an Army confronting the enemy in the field. We have troops and bases at vital points overseas . . . Until the Kremlin shows by deeds that it is willing to abandon its aggressive designs, we must prepare to prevent disaster. This may be an election year, but the Kremlin won't take a vacation simply because of the political situation. If we weaken, if we fall back, the Kremlin will see a chance to move in. There's only one real language they understand."
And the President of the U.S., glaring fiercely, held up a tightly clenched fist for all to see. The gesture might have been more to the point, punctuating another above-the-battle lecture by the new Harry Truman, if the President himself did not still rate a large share of the blame for the perilous state of the nation's defenses. But many a good Democrat, glumly contemplating the leaderless, divided state of the party last week, realized with a sharp sense of loss just how much the party would miss the political touch of the old campaigner.
* To a visiting friend last week, the President gave a more down-to-earth reason for his retirement, quoting a favorite expression of his military jester, Major General Harry Vaughan: "If you don't like the heat, get out of the kitchen. Well, that's what I'm doing."
** A throwback to the 1948 Democratic Convention, where Nominee Truman, in a 2 a.m. acceptance speech, announced that he was summoning Congress into special session for July 26, "which out in Missouri they call Turnip Day."