WHEN I REPRESENTED the first Congressional District of Florida in the US House of Representatives, my fellow members referred to our legislative body as “The People’s House”; the Senate was scornfully dismissed as “The House of Lords.” As members of the House, we understood that our constitutionally mandated role was to be the chamber most aligned with the current mood of Americans. House members are elected to two-year terms and senators serve for six years. Each House member represents about 600,000 constituents while Senators must cover an entire state. That is why the framers of the Constitution viewed the House to be the most democratic body in the federal government; it can also be the most raucous, with 435 members crowding into one chamber. While there is no shortage of ego in the lower body, the sheer mass of humanity on the House floor tends to check the pretensions of most individual members. Besides, the Rules Committee leaders always made clear to rebellious members like myself that regardless of any feelings about the “People’s House,” it functioned legislatively more like a dictatorship than a democracy. The Rules Committee would set the limits of every debate taken up by the House. Among other things, this tightly limited the time members were allowed to discuss legislation and prevented the sort of long-winded orations that were so common in the Senate.
Though Dean Acheson could be a man of great charm, he did not suffer fools gladly, and on occasion he found it difficult to deal with House members, whom he considered provincial and ill informed. In his memoirs, Acheson noted an observation by historian Henry Adams that “the chief concern of the Secretary of State—the world beyond our boundaries—was to most members of the Congress only a troublesome intrusion into their chief interest—the internal affairs of the country, and especially of the particular parts of it they represented.”
Truman’s undersecretary of state ruefully reflected, “The principal consequence of foreign impact upon particular districts is trouble; rarely is it, or is it seen to be, beneficial. . . . The focus and representation of members of the House of Representatives are . . . narrowly circumscribed. For the most part, then, the Secretary of State comes to Congress bearing word of troubles about which Congress does not want to hear.”
It was fortuitous, then, that the administration had as an ally the chairman of the House Committee on Foreign Affairs, Congressman Charles A. Eaton of New Jersey, a Republican Baptist minister accustomed to rallying followers to a cause.
“Doc” Eaton was in his twenty-second year in Congress when Truman made his momentous request on behalf of Greece and Turkey. The chairman was born in Nova Scotia in 1868, and moved to the United States to study theology in Newton Centre, Massachusetts. After his ordination he served as pastor of churches in Massachusetts, Ohio, New York, and Canada before settling in New Jersey and becoming a dairy farmer. A passionate preacher, his interest soon turned to politics, and he was elected to the House of Representatives in 1924. With his shock of white hair and neat mustache, Eaton was a striking and charismatic figure.
Chairman Eaton opposed the New Deal but was an ardent internationalist and anticommunist. Even before coming to Congress he was delivering speeches warning that bolshevism was “contrary to human nature” and that communists used “physical force as the instrument of its advancement.” Along with Vandenberg, the Foreign Affairs Chairman in the House resolved immediately to make the Truman Doctrine a legislative reality. For all their political differences, Truman respected Eaton, finding him “enlightened” while praising his “brilliant, intelligent leadership.” Those skills would be badly needed to pass Truman’s sweeping legislation in an otherwise hostile Republican House.
Eaton introduced H.R. 2616, the House version of the bill, on March 18, a day before Vandenberg introduced the Senate version. In his floor statement, he swiftly scheduled a series of committee hearings, the first of which was on March 20.
The House chairman gaveled the March 20 hearing to order at ten a.m. Sitting before him in the flickering storm of photographers’ flashbulbs was the familiar figure of the acting secretary of state. Acheson was prepared to deliver an even more “troublesome intrusion” than usual. The Groton and Yale man’s discomfort on the House side of the Capitol would soon become apparent, even as he submitted to what he would describe to the committee members as an “ordeal.”
ACHESON IMMEDIATELY LAUNCHED into a detailed account of the delivery of the British notes to the State Department on February 21 and their immediate fallout. After the undersecretary’s prepared statement had been read, Eaton began to call upon each committee member in turn, and a lengthy interrogation ensued.
The undersecretary of state engaged in a testy exchange with Congressman James P. Richards of South Carolina, who asked a question about the UN and then quoted from the Soviet newspaper Pravda, which had asked the rhetorical question “Why did the United States not bring the matter to the United Nations if something really threatened Greece’s integrity?” Acheson responded that he had already discussed the issue in his opening statement, and asked irritably, “Is it your desire that I repeat it?” Richards shot back, “I wish you would amplify and clarify what you have said in your written statement.” The acting secretary responded with typical Achesonian arrogance: “Perhaps saying something two or three times does clarify it.” The chairman likely winced; a witness talking down to a member of Congress was bad form and could make Eaton’s job as Republican chairman even more difficult.
In response to a member who expressed concern that “not only will we go after this procedure in Greece and Turkey, but other nations threatened as they are threatened,” Acheson responded reassuringly, “You must approach each situation as it occurs, or if it occurs, in the light of the facts of that situation. . . . We keep the field open to continue our choice.”
Things took a more sober turn under questioning by Democratic congressman Mike Mansfield of Montana, who would go on to become Senate majority leader and ambassador to Japan. Mansfield’s inquiry was blunt and direct: “In your opinion, what are the possibilities of this policy leading to war?” Acheson seemed momentarily taken aback before replying, “I should say that—I was going to say there was no possibility of it leading to war. I do not see how it possibly can lead to war. It seems to me that by strengthening the forces of democracy and individual freedom and strengthening the economies of those two countries, you do a great deal to eliminate the sort of situation which would produce friction between the great powers.”
A future witness before the committee, Undersecretary of State for Economic Affairs William L. Clayton, would address the financial elements of the aid package in greater detail. President Truman had just created his post, and Clayton brought to it a wealth of experience, having served in senior positions in the Reconstruction Finance Corporation, the Export-Import Bank, and various government agencies. His statement to the committee described in detail the “appalling” state of the Greek economy in the wake of the war. Not only had the Germans ruthlessly exploited the country during the brutal occupation from 1941 to 1944, exporting food to Germany in vast quantities, but they had also wreaked havoc during their withdrawal. This “policy of systematic destruction” was “calculated to wreck the Greek economy to such an extent that a liberated Greece would have slight prospect of normal recovery in the foreseeable future.” He continued, “The physical damage inflicted on the country was sufficient to result in almost complete paralysis. Means of communication were destroyed, port facilities wrecked, and bridges demolished. Livestock was carried off, villages burned, railways torn up, and the Corinth Canal dynamited.”
Clayton concluded his statement by clarifying to members of the House Foreign Affairs Committee whether the aid to Greece would take the form of a loan or a grant. Some journalists had been unclear in their reporting, and even some of the committee members were unsure of the administration’s intentions. The undersecretary emphasized that any American aid should take the form of outright grants, declaring, “I do not believe that we should create financial obligations for which there is no reasonable prospect of repayment.”
Eaton’s committee held a total of seventeen hearings on H.R. 2616, both public and private, and heard from a vast array of witnesses. The bill that gradually took shape during the deliberations differed slightly from the Senate version: it lacked Vandenberg’s preamble about the United Nations and put greater emphasis on the need for “full and continuous publicity” about how the funds would be dispersed in Greece and Turkey. The committee finally reported H.R. 2616 on April 25 with only one dissenting vote.
The House floor debate on the momentous bill began on May 6, and was from the beginning a more contentious process than it had been in the Senate. Chairman Eaton opened the proceedings with a reference to the president’s “historic address” on March 12, and argued that the policy that he announced had been “forced upon him and upon the Congress and the Nation by the inescapable facts of history. It is a product of those mysterious and mighty spiritual energies of mankind upon which the world has been, is now and will continue to be carried irresistibly forward to its unpredictable destiny. We can no more escape the impact of these mighty forces flowing beneath the surface of human existence than we can escape the law of gravitation.”
The Chairman acknowledged some of the risks inherent in adopting the Truman Doctrine but argued that to not do so would be inviting even “greater risks.” He declared himself “profoundly convinced that the safety and security of our Nation and of the world, as well as the very existence of the United Nations,” depended on congressional approval of the bill.
The rest of Eaton’s statement was a catalog of Soviet aggression and a warning that communism, “in its essence close kin to fascism and nazism, now bestrides the world like a colossus.” He warned his colleagues, “No amount of wishful thinking or mawkish sentimentality can disguise the grim facts of the communistic march toward world domination.”
Invoking the UN, but in a more martial spirit than his Senate counterpart, he went on: “Much of this expansion of Russian power has taken place in complete disregard of the obligations which she has assumed in the organization of the United Nations. If Russia were permitted to take Greece and Turkey, her next steps of course would be Iran and Afghanistan, India and China. . . .”
The Baptist preacher then reached a rhetorical crescendo: “The supreme issue which confronts us today . . . is simply this: Is the world civilization now in process of creation to be a civilization of freedom or of slavery? Does Americanism or communism hold the key to the future of mankind?”
Perhaps more effective than the Foreign Affairs chairman’s oratorical flouirsh was a letter he received from Secretary Marshall, and from which he read. In more restrained prose, Marshall expressed his regret at having to be absent from Washington during the committee’s consideration of the bill, and continued, “My strong conviction that the immediate passage of this bill is a matter of the greatest urgency was made even more positive by the recent meeting in Moscow.” With his Soviet meetings behind him, there was no further need for diplomatic restraint from the general.
The former Speaker, Sam Rayburn, who had hosted the “Board of Education” meeting during which Truman had received his fateful phone call from the White House, invoked the Almighty in his fervent speech that evening, crying “God help us; God help the world,” “if we do not accept our responsibility to aid countries . . . who do not want to be smothered by Communism.”
This passionate outburst from the political giant was driven not only by a desire to support the bill, but also because of an ominous danger that had arisen: opponents had seized upon the lack of United Nations involvement to craft an amendment that would gut the bill. Offered by Republican congressman Lawrence H. Smith of Wisconsin, the GOP amendment would delay unilateral action by the United States for sixty days, allowing the UN to take up the issue first. The amendment was designed to appeal not only to outright opponents of the Truman Doctrine, but also to those who supported it in principle but lamented bypassing the UN.
Rayburn was apoplectic, warning his colleagues, “If Greece and Turkey need help, they need it now, not sixty days from now, or a year from now. That might be too late.” To support the amendment, he thundered, would be to repeat the mistakes of 1919 and see the Allied triumph of the Second World War “thrown away.”
The day of debate ended with the bill’s future clouded by the UN amendment’s impact on the outcome. Eaton and his lieutenants spent an anxious evening sounding out their colleagues and repeating reassurances regarding the United Nations. The urgency of the crisis in Greece weighed heavily upon the Republican chairman, and like Harry Truman, Eaton believed that time was not a luxury the United States Congress had.
The morning of May 8 was bright and chilly as legislators filed back into the chamber for another contentious day of the debate. As President Truman celebrated his sixty-third birthday at the White House, the members continued to clash over the president’s proposed doctrine.
Congressman Smith added what he called a “sugaring” proviso to the UN amendment he had offered the day before: his modified amendment would appropriate $50 to $100 million to the United Nations to allow it to take the lead on Greek aid. In addition, he prepared another amendment to cut the bill’s $400 million authorization in half. Action on the amendments was deferred until the following day, while the administration strategized with Eaton. There was little doubt that Smith was doing an effective job trying to push House members into supporting his UN plan.
One of the more colorful of the bill’s opponents was Democratic congresswoman Helen Gahagan Douglas of California, a former actress who would be defeated in a Senate race three years later by Congressman Richard M. Nixon. During that campaign, Nixon would shamelessly attack her left-wing political views and dub her “the Pink Lady,” saying she was “pink right down to her underwear.” Regardless of her undergarments’ color, Douglas was determined to stop the Truman Doctrine in its tracks. She offered an amendment that would block any funds for Turkey until the UN was given one year to study the Turkish situation and publish a report.
Undeterred by the skeptical reaction of her colleagues, the California congresswoman offered another amendment, one that would prevent atomic materials and information from being shared with Greece and Turkey. She declared, “We have not spent five minutes inquiring into the beliefs of King Paul of Greece, to whom under this bill the President would have authority to hand over anything or everything related to atomic energy.”
One of her bemused colleagues, doubtless having difficulty imagining President Truman handing over atomic materials to the king of Greece, complimented her “well-drawn” amendment, while pointing out its oddity. Republican congressman Jacob K. Javits of New York took a more subtle approach, introducing an amendment that would allow funds for Turkey to be spent but require that the United Nations conduct a review of Soviet pressure on Turkey at the same time. The New York Times reported, “It had been expected widely at the Capitol that Mr. Javits’ proposal would receive strong support. It was a phase of the arguments that the United States by its proposed unilateral action, was ‘by-passing’ the United Nations.”
Douglas’s amendments could be easily dispatched, but those offered by Javits represented a more significant threat. Fortunately for supporters of the bill, Chairman Eaton was prepared with a response. He had another important letter at the ready, this one from Warren R. Austin, US delegate to the United Nations. Eaton triumphantly read Austin’s letter to his colleagues on the House floor:
In my opinion the United States program for aid to Greece and Turkey does not bypass the United Nations. On the contrary it would be a most essential act in support of the United Nations Charter and would enhance the building of collective security under the United Nations. . . .
The proposed American program will assist in restoring security and stability in Greece and maintaining them in Turkey. When stable conditions are restored in Greece it should be possible to provide such further financial and economic assistance as might then be required through the Economic and Social Council of the United Nations and related specialized agencies.
A letter of support from America’s representative to the United Nations was a well-timed blow to the bill’s opponents; if the representative of the United States to the UN did not consider the bill a threat to the integrity of that body, then why should Congress? The members responded by clamoring for a vote on the Douglas and Javits amendments; all three were shouted down in a chorus of noes.
The exhausted legislators adjourned late that evening, with a call to reassemble at ten the following morning, May 9. The next day, Eaton again opened the proceedings and contended with more amendments similar to those the House had dispensed with the day before. But he must have taken comfort from the report in the New York Times that morning that the bill had “moved into an apparently safe position.”
The amendments by Congressman Smith that had caused Eaton and others so much unease were dispatched by large margins. And the endlessly prolonged debates on each amendment that marked the opening phases of the debate yielded to a swifter process, as the bill’s opponents realized that they were headed for defeat.
The most elaborate maneuver that day came from Congressman Chet Holifield, a Democrat from California, who at the last moment offered an amendment to recommit the bill and direct the president to work with the United Nations. But like so many others, it was defeated by voice vote. By now, the intention of the House was clear.
The time for debate had ended and a roll call vote had finally begun. The House had spent more time debating the bill than it had any other issue in the crowded first half of 1947—nine hours of general discussion and deliberation over two dozen amendments. As the clerk slowly and monotonously read the members’ names, the fate of the Truman Doctrine momentarily hung in the balance. Would members cave to calls of “America’s First” and take the path of least resistance by defaulting to a political position that had been the norm for almost two centures? The air had been charged with passionate denunciations of communism and calls for America to take the lead against it; but opponents of the bill had presented a compelling case as well, warning of the consequences of unlimited worldwide commitments, and reminding their colleagues about the horrors of war. But in the end, Truman’s victory was complete. H.R. 2616 passed by a margin of 287 to 187. The vote had been 161 Democrats and 126 Republicans in favor, with 13 Democrats and 93 Republicans voting against.
All that remained was for a conference committee, made up of five members of each house, to reconcile the differences between S. 938 and H.R. 2616. This was swiftly appointed, and over a few days the two bills were reviewed. Vandenberg and Eaton managed that conference as efficiently as they had the committee process and the floor debate, and on May 13, the committee reported a final bill. Not surprisingly, it was closer to the Senate version, with the Vandenberg amendments and a few minor House provisions retained. The congressional process reached its conclusion in anticlimactic fashion on May 15, when both the House and the Senate approved the conference report by voice vote. The Truman Doctrine had passed its legislative test.
At four o’clock that afternoon, the president held his regular news conference. Reporters jostled one another in the Oval Office as Truman sat behind his desk, fielding questions on an array of subjects, including the final congressional passage of the aid bill. When a journalist asked who would head the Greek mission, the president demurred, saying that he was still trying to persuade his favored candidate to take the job. When asked if the person in question was reluctant, Truman replied:
People are always reluctant to take a hard job. There’s a difference, you know, between doing a patriotic duty in peacetime and doing a patriotic duty when the country is in a shooting war, when there is some sort of incentive that makes people more cooperative, more anxious to make sacrifices—and I can’t blame them. But the present period is just as important for the welfare of the country as actual shooting warfare would be. And I hope the patriots will bear that in mind: it is necessary to do things that you don’t want to do . . . for the welfare and benefit of your country.
And then, as if to lighten the mood, the president chuckled and said, “I didn’t intend to give you a lecture.”
The timing was propitious. Just five days after the final bill was approved, the Greek communist leader Nikos Zachariadis met with Stalin in Moscow. No record of their conversation survives, but soon thereafter Stalin gave his official Soviet endorsement to the communists to continue their insurgency against the Greek government. Conscious of the pledge he had made to Churchill three years before, not because of any sense of moral commitment but simply out of caution, Stalin declined to offer any direct aid. But he encouraged the governments of the other Balkan nations in the Soviet orbit to arm and finance the Greek communists.
The White House had reason to be jubilant in the wake of such a sweeping victory. But the responsibilities the United States had now taken upon itself were vast, and this was hardly the time for public celebration. Truman received a reminder of how difficult a choice he had forced Congress to make in the form of a letter from Francis H. Case, a conservative Republican congressman from South Dakota, who wrote in the wake of the House’s passage of the bill that dozens of members had supported it only because they feared “pulling the rug out from under you or Secretary Marshall.” More ominously, he warned the president, “No country, ours or any other, is wise enough or rich enough, or just plain big enough to run the rest of the world.”
THE PRESIDENT WAS close to his ninety-four-year-old mother, Martha Truman, and throughout his presidency visited her as often as he could at her home in Grandview, Missouri, just south of Kansas City. He received word on May 17 that she was gravely ill, and immediately flew to Missouri to see her, confident in the knowledge that legislative work on the aid bill was done and only his signature was required to make it law. There he passed an anxious few days at her bedside, as she seemed for a time on the verge of death. He was still there when the final copy of the legislation was flown out to Kansas City on the evening of May 21.
MOST PRESIDENTS WOULD have signed such a grand and an historic piece of legislation in a lavish White House ceremony, attended by members of Congress and political supporters, with each of the bill’s chief sponsors given a pen used for the signing as a memento. But in an understated touch that somehow suited him, President Truman signed the final bill at eight o’clock in the morning on May 22 in the Muehlebach Hotel in Kansas City, Missouri, the same hotel where he would retreat in earlier years for rest and introspection. There was little time for reflection on this particular occasion, however. The New York Times described the president as “deeply moved,” and the atmosphere as one of “extreme solemnity” as he signed the bill that would become known to history as the Truman Doctrine. The commander in chief sat before a table in the dining room of his suite, surrounded by reporters and photographers and dazzled by the glare of camera lights. Truman asked the assembled newsmen if “everybody was happy,” but no trace of a smile crossed his features.
Then he walked a few steps into the adjoining room, and read a brief statement:
The Act . . . is an important step in the building of the peace. Its passage by overwhelming majorities in both Houses of the Congress is proof that the United States earnestly desires peace and is willing to make a vigorous effort to help create conditions of peace.
The conditions of peace include, among other things, the ability of nations to maintain order and independence, and to support themselves economically. In extending the aid requested by two members of the United Nations . . . the United States is helping to further aims and purposes identical with those of the United Nations. Our aid in this instance is evidence not only that we pledge our support to the United Nations but that we act to support it.
With the passage and signature of this Act, our Ambassadors in Greece and Turkey are being instructed to enter into immediate negotiations for agreements which, in accordance with the terms of the Act, will govern the application of our aid. We intend to make sure that the aid we extend will benefit all the peoples of Greece and Turkey, not any particular group or faction.
In a generous and well-deserved tribute to those Republicans and Democrats on Capitol Hill who had shepherded the bill through so quickly, he continued, “I wish to express my appreciation to the leaders and members of both parties in the Congress for their splendid support in obtaining the passage of this vital legislation.”
A Times reporter present observed that Truman had completed his prepared statement but seemed to think that something more was called for. He continued,
I want to say also that the press is to be commended—complimented—on the manner in which the program was explained to the country. I think the press made a great contribution toward informing the people of the United States—toward showing just exactly what the intention of the legislation is.
I want to emphasize, too, that this is a step for peace. It is a step to support the United Nations. I cannot emphasize that too strongly. It is set out clearly in the statement, but I am just calling these matters to your attention so that when you read the statement you will know exactly what it means.
President Truman then signed an executive order granting the secretary of state the power to oversee his program. The reporters pressed Truman about whom he would name as the plan’s administrator, but he had no answer for them as yet. Those and other challenges could be dealt with later. For now it was time to reflect on the fact that something remarkable had just occurred. There, in a small hotel room in the nation’s heartland, the president of the United States had signed a bill that would change America’s foreign policy construct for the next seventy years.