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Velde's clumping entry "into the act" was the political boner of the week: it made a martyr out of Harry Truman, who, as ex-President of the U.S., should have been immune from such summary practices. For 48 tense hours, the high command of the Republican National Committee put pressure on Velde to withdraw the subpoenas. Finally, Truman, Clark and Byrnes all refused to honor the subpoenas,* on the ground that the committee had no right to demand that they testify. (Byrnes's specific reason was that the committee had no right to summon a governor from his duties, though he added that he would be ready to testify in South Carolina. Truman and Clark based their refusals on the argument that the subpoena constituted interference by the legislative with the executive and judicial branches of the Government.) Velde agreed that he would not try to force them to testify, and moved off the stage.
Before the week was out, the Senate Internal Security Subcommittee, headed by Indiana's Senator William Jenner. had the ball. That was where the G.O.P. wanted the ball to be. The committee called two witnesses: General Harry Vaughan. formerly Truman's military aide, and Theron Lamar Caudle, onetime Assistant Attorney General. But their appearance was anticlimactic. Neither one added anything to the stories they had told reporters earlier (TIME. Nov. 16). Even "Sweet Thing" Caudle didn't provide a good quote for the press.
At the White House, Dwight Eisenhower tried to stay above the brawl, but reporters did their best to get him into it. At his news conference, the President said Brownell had come to see him a few days before the White charge was made. He had never met White† and knew nothing about him, the President said, but he told Brownell to do his duty as he saw it. In answer to a question, he said he thought it inconceivable that Harry Truman knowingly did anything to damage this country. He added that he did not think Brownell had charged that Truman actually saw the FBI report. President Eisenhower's answers showed that he was not so well-informed on the case as he might have been.
Remakers of the World. The spies-in-government story won't lie down, won't go away. Harry White was not a freak; what he did was more or less repeated by a dozen or more other important men in the Roosevelt and Truman Administrations. Probably not one of them ever said to himself: "Now I am a spy," or "Now I am a traitor." That is not the pattern of 20th century treason.
The road to the political calamities of this era has been paved solid by good intentions, and traveled by men who wanted to help the world. They wanted to remake it. That can be a generous thought; but it can also be a supremely greedy and arrogant thought. A man who thinks that he is moving the nations can get the idea that law, rules, morals and loyalty do not apply to him.
Harry Dexter White got that idea. It destroyed him, and it cost his country dear.