Review: Truman

Truman by David McCullough
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

He asked for national compulsory health insurance to be funded by payroll deductions. Under the system, all citizens would receive medical and hospital service irrespective of their ability to pay. And with the cry for demobilization at a peak, he went before a joint session to call for universal military training, an idea that stood no chance, but that he believed in fervently. "We must face the fact that peace must be built upon power, as well as upon good will and good deeds." Never again could the country count on the luxury of time to arm itself. He wanted mandatory training for one year for all young men between eighteen and twenty, not as members of the armed services, but as citizens who would comprise a trained reserve, ready in case of emergency.

In an 8,000-word message from the Moscow Embassy that was to be come known soon as "the long telegram," George Kennan, the scholarly chargé d' affaires, had tried to dash any hopes the administration might have of reasonable dealings with the Stalin regime. The Kremlin, wrote Kennan, had a neurotic view of the world, at the heart of which was an age-old Russian sense of insecurity. For this reason, the Soviet regime was "committed fanatically" to the idea that in the long run there could be no "peaceful coexistence" with the United States, and further that "it is desirable and necessary that the internal harmony of our society be disrupted, our traditional way of life destroyed, the international authority of our state broken...." Stripped of the "fig leaf'' of Marxism, Kennan said, the Soviets would stand before history "as only the last of a long session of cruel and wasteful Russian rulers who have relentlessly forced their country on to ever new heights of military power in order to guarantee external security for their internally weak regimes.

Proto-Cold War formulation of The Truman Doctrine that pledged American support for democracies against authoritarian threats:

"It is the policy of the United States to support free peoples who are resisting attempted subjugation by armed minorities or by outside pressures," the line read in its original state. Acheson changed it to, "I believe it must be the policy of the United States..

To Clifford, it was time to take a stand against the Soviets, time for "the opening gun" in a campaign to awaken the American people. As he had urged the President to stand fast...

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