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Was he fired? Not at all. "Everything's lovely." What had happened? He had merely promised that "he would make no public speeches or statements until the 'Foreign Ministers' Conference in Paris is concluded." In the crowd of spectators which had gathered to see what all the excitement was about, someone shouted: "Viva Wallace!" Wallace leaped into his auto, shouted in his best Berlitz-taught Spanish: "Muchas gracias," and rolled away.
"Superhuman Forbearance." Secretary Byrnes was in Paris. Since the opening of the Peace Conference, an amateur statistician of the Quai d'Orsay had estimated Byrnes had uttered some 90,000 words in public. But since Wallace had attacked his policy he had not spoken one. Now he still said nothing.
But Senators Tom Connally and Arthur Vandenberg talked and there was no mistaking their indignation. Vandenberg, sick of trying to demonstrate national unity in foreign policy when the Administration was so disunited, was thoroughly fed up. Editorialized the Baltimore Sun: "It will be almost impossible to repair [the Wallace-Truman blunder] unless these men show almost superhuman forbearance and stand by the stricken ship of nonpartisan policy." Connally and Vandenberg stood by.
Others spoke. From capitals around the world dispatches poured into Washington. Acting Secretary of State Will Clayton had rushed to the White House four times in three days. Byrnes knew all this. Still he said nothing. Louder than a million words, the overwhelming silence from Jimmy Byrnes echoed across the Atlantic.
Washington Calling. Harry Truman could stand it no longer. The day after he put a temporary gag on Henry Wallace, he called his Secretary of State on the transatlantic phone. The connection was bad. So he walked to the teletype in the White House communications room. In his mind's eye, no doubt, was the pale, birdlike face of Jimmy Byrnes bent over the teletype in the Paris Embassy. Across 3,800 miles the machines and the men began to talk.
Their exact words are not known, but it is known that the Washington machine tried to explain Mr. Truman's actions. The Paris machine asked some pointed questions, and said at length that the U.S. delegation (Byrnes, Vandenberg and Tom Connally) would have to quit Paris and return to Washington unless the President's foreign policy were clarified. The Washington machine thanked the Paris machine for a "cooperative" attitude. Did the Paris machine demand Wallace's head? Not at all. In the silence of the White House and the Paris Embassy the machines signed off.
The exact personal relationship between Harry Truman, the man who is President, and Jimmy Byrnes, the man who might have been, will be detailed by history. One thing is known: the relationship is not the usual one between boss and subordinate.
Mr. Truman called in Charlie Ross and 39-year-old Clark Clifford, his special counsel. He talked & talked—about Wallace. Although he had told the world that the matter was settled, it really was not —as the correspondents abroad and the newspapers at home kept telling him. He went to his bedroom, still pondering. "It was," said one awed intimate, "like Jesus walking in the garden." The next morning he had made up his mind.