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At 10:10 the white phone rang on the desk of his Secretary of Commerce. The phone was Henry Wallace's direct line to the White House. Wallace picked it up, listened and raised a startled face. Then he said: "If that is your request, Mr. President, I will gladly resign."
That was Harry Truman's request, the end of Henry Wallace's thirteen stormy years in the Government. Wallace penned a short note. "Dear Harry," he wrote. "As you requested, here is my resignation. I shall continue to fight for peace. I am sure that you approve and will join me in this great endeavor."
Having delivered himself of that, which may have been a taunt, he posed for news photographers. For a man who had once tried to knock out a photographer, he was unusually gracious. He posed for half an hour and even strode across the street to pose sitting on a park bench reading the funny papers.
The Wallace Choice. That was the end of the uproar. In the first after-silence, those two fledgling organizations,—the National Citizens P.A.C. and the Independent Citizens Committee of the Arts, Sciences and Professions (TIME, Sept. 9) looked a little taken aback. It was at their rally that their hero Wallace had made his speech. They had hardly anticipated such a far-reaching result.
From London came an audible sigh. Moscow refrained from comment. Mr. Truman, extracted what comfort he could from the fact that he had acted, in the end, with respectable firmness; he had repaired the damage he had done to Byrnes's prestige. And now Henry Wallace could say what he liked and fight all he wanted for the policy which he espoused.
There were few doubts as to what that policy would be. Among its pointedly implied recommendations: ¶ The abandonment of the present U.S. military program, which embraces the manufacture of B-29s, B-36s, $13 billion for the War and Navy Departments, bases in Greenland and Okinawa. ¶ The abandonment of the U.S. atomic-control plan in favor of something more like Russia's counterproposal, which would give Russia atomic power without necessarily subjecting her to international scrutiny. ¶ The abandonment of U.S. resistance to Russian attempts to "obtain warm-water ports and her own security system in the form of 'friendly' neighboring states."
The U.S., said Wallace, can choose one of two points of view. "The first is that it is not possible to get along with the Russians and therefore war is inevitable. The second is that war with Russia would bring catastrophe to all mankind and therefore we must find a way of living in peace." Wallace chose the second for "our own welfare as well as that of the entire world."