AMERICAN NEWSPAPERS AND magazines enjoyed a prestige and influence in 1947 that is difficult to imagine in an era when most print publications are struggling to simply survive. In an age before cable news and the Internet, publications like Time, Life, and the still venerable New York Times were not only sources of news and information, but also institutions with considerable political clout. Wooing the print press would be a critical part of any effort by the Truman administration to influence Congress. If the press lent their prestige to a policy, many on the Hill would have little choice but to follow their lead. Dismissing media outlets as “fake news” or villifying journalists as “enemies of the people” was not an option in a time when such autocratic ravings were reserved for tyrants like Joseph Stalin.
Although the drama of the past week had mostly been kept from the press, reporters were beginning to grow curious about events around the White House. The burst of activity in the State Department had been evident, and soon word would leak to the media. Truman believed it was time to satisfy their curiosity, and if possible, win editorial support.
Hours after the meeting with congressional leaders in the White House, General Marshall summoned a group of correspondents and shared some of the week’s events. Everything was “on background,” and reporters knew that to violate Marshall’s rules by identifying the source would lead to their banishment from the inner sanctum. The secretary of state explained the strategic significance of Greece and Turkey and emphasized the urgency of the situation. More off-the-record briefings followed, and awareness of the crisis began to reach to the general public.
The overture to the press bore immediate fruit the following morning, February 28, in the form of a front-page story by the New York Times’ legendary national correspondent James Reston. The Scotland-born Reston, age thirty-seven, was immensely influential and had won a Pulitzer Prize for his coverage of the Dumbarton Oaks Conference that led to the creation of the United Nations. He had also played a prominent role in the American wartime propaganda effort by establishing the London branch of the Office of War Information, and understood the art of preparing the public for unexpected events that lay ahead.
Rather than peacetime propaganda, Reston’s story in the Times was a faithful summation of the previous day’s events; Reston also provided readers a powerful summation of the matter at hand. He observed, “There is far more at stake in this crisis than the appropriation of money or the economic plight of Great Britain. . . . In choosing to put economic stability first and in turning to the United States for assistance, the British have in effect asked whether the United States was prepared to assume a great part of the responsibility for world peace and stability assumed by Britain in the nineteenth century.”
Reston breathlessly reported that the meeting with congressional leaders was “surrounded with unusual secrecy. Those who attended were sworn to silence and every effort was made to prevent the subject under discussion from being divulged to any more legislators than necessary to gain support for a loan.”
But the word was now out, and the administration’s efforts seemed to be proceeding like clockwork. On the morning of the Times story, Acheson assembled a larger group of State Department officials to inform them of the new policy’s details and direct them how to best implement the administration’s anti-Soviet plan. He told the group of the surprisingly supportive response the plan had received from congressional leadership the day before, and cautioned the group to avoid any direct criticism of the Soviet Union. Joseph Jones recalled that “it seemed to those present that a new chapter in world history had opened, and they were the most privileged of men, participants in a drama such as rarely occurs even in the long life of a great nation.”
At that, Acheson departed the room and left Henderson and Hickerson to carry on the meeting. There were countless assignments to dole out, including the drafting of legislation and crafting of official responses to the British notes. Hickerson rallied the assembled diplomats by declaring that the situation in the eastern Mediterranean “was certainly the most important thing that had happened since Pearl Harbor,” and then set the State Department officials to work.
Later that day, the director of the Office of Public Affairs, Francis Russell, convened a meeting with his counterparts in the Navy and War departments. The group’s elaborate title was the “Subcommittee on Foreign Policy Information of the State-War-Navy Coordinating Committee.” Policy personnel from all three departments were also present. Their task was onerous: how to craft a message that would convince a skeptical Congress and public to support a major new foreign policy initiative that would have profound and long-lasting effects. While press outreach had already begun, a much more elaborate approach would be required to sell this dramatic policy shift to the nation.
It was agreed that little should be said about the British. The sour reference to “pulling British chestnuts out of the fire” at Marshall’s congressional meeting was symbolic of wider public sentiment. And it would be unseemly to appear triumphalist as the once-powerful empire continued its rapid decline and contraction. Rather, the public relations campaign would present Truman’s policy as one of supporting democracy throughout the world for the sake of American national security. There was a sense of exhilaration around the table at the sheer audacity of what the administration was attempting to achieve on the world stage. American isolationist sentiment had been so strong for so long that the government was accustomed to acting incrementally whenever foreign entanglements were involved in a new policy. Roosevelt had used every political skill imaginable to coax the American people into supporting the Allied cause long before Pearl Harbor, using elliptical phrases and homely metaphors to camouflage his true intent. But now a new and historic step was to be taken, and would soon be expressed in Truman’s blunt and unambiguous style.
The subcommittee produced a report that would serve as a blueprint for the government’s public relations policy in the weeks to come. Much of it would lay the foundation for the president’s eventual speech to Congress. Drafted primarily by Russell, the report was focused, direct, and drafted with powerful prose.
A cardinal objective of United States foreign policy is a world in which nations shall be able to work out their own way of life free of coercion by other nations. To this end the United States has just finished fighting a war against Germany and Japan who were attempting to impose their will upon other nations. To the same end, the United States has taken a leading part in establishing the United Nations which is designed to make possible freedom and independence for all of its member nations.
The intent of this country to maintain a world of free peoples is directed equally against aggressive movements and against the imposition through whatever means from without of dictatorial regimes whether fascist, nazi, communist, or of any other form.
This principle of our foreign policy recognizes that only in such a world can the United States maintain its freedom and security.
A frank appraisal of the present world situation requires a recognition of the fact that a number of the countries of the world either have had forms of government imposed upon them against the will of a majority of the people or are in imminent danger of such a fate.
There is, at the present point in world history, a conflict between two ways of life. One way of life is based upon the will of the majority, free institutions, representative government, free elections, guarantees of individual liberty, freedom of speech and religion, and freedom from political oppression. The second way of life is based upon the imposition of the will of a minority upon the majority, upon control of the press and other means of information by the minority, upon terror and oppression. Such minority terroristic groups have various objectives. They may seek a fascist, a feudal, a communist or other order. But the major issue that is posed for the world is not one of objectives, not one between socialism or free enterprise, not one of progress or reaction, not one of left versus right. The issue is one of methods: between dictatorship and freedom; between servitude of the majority to a minority and freedom to seek progress.
The defeat of the axis powers was a milestone in the struggle for freedom. The end of the war, however, did not resolve the issue for all time. It is, in fact, alive in several areas of the world at the present time.
It is the policy of the United States to give support to free peoples who are attempting to resist subjugation from armed minorities or from outside forces. The United States will, within the framework of the Charter of the United Nations, assist in assuring the ability of peoples, who are now free, to work out their own destiny.
This is not a new policy. It was stated in the Atlantic Charter and in the Declaration of the United Nations, and was carried forward in the Yalta Agreement.
Through the granting of economic assistance and otherwise, we intend to help the Greek nation to preserve its free institutions.
This assistance should of itself give encouragement to other free nations through the notice that will thus be served that the United States recognizes the interdependence of all free countries.
A policy based upon the interdependence of free peoples does not necessarily betoken an increase in world tension nor an approach to war. On the contrary, the possibility of war will be greatly lessened. The continuing solidarity and strengthening of the free nations of the world will give support to the United Nations and thus strengthen the foundations of peace.
The free countries of the world, whether free enterprise or not, can co-exist peacefully provided there is no plan of conquest, domination or infiltration by any of them. The United States desires earnestly to effect with the Soviet Union a thoroughgoing understanding that will promote such a peaceful living together. It hopes and believes that this can be done.
The granting of economic assistance to Greece is consistent with the wholehearted support which the United States is giving to the United Nations. Steps taken by the United Nations to promote reconstruction and insure the stability of nations has proceeded upon assumption that there would be inter-governmental economic assistance. The United States will continue to support and work through the United Nations in every way possible.
The present power relationships of the great states preclude the domination of the world by any one of them. Those power relationships cannot be substantially altered by the unilateral action of any one great state without profoundly disturbing the whole structure of the United Nations. Though the status quo is not sacred and unchangeable, we cannot overlook a unilateral gnawing away at the status quo. The Charter of the United Nations forbids aggression, and we cannot allow aggression to be accomplished by coercion or pressure or by subterfuges such as political infiltration.
The national security of the United States depends to a large degree on the maintenance of the principles of the United Nations and on maintaining the confidence of other nations in these principles. A seizure of power by a Communist minority in Greece would seriously impair that confidence.
On March 3, Paul Economou-Gouras, charge d’affaires of the Greek embassy, delivered the formal note from Greece requesting American assistance. The contents reflected suggestions provided by the State Department, and the tone of the message was urgent. It opened with grim references to “the systematic devastation of Greece, the decimation and debilitation of her people and the destruction of her economy,” and after detailing the economic and military assistance it so desperately needed, declared, “The need is great. The determination of the Greek people to do all in their power to restore Greece as a self-respecting, self-supporting democracy is also great; but the destruction in Greece has been so complete as to rob the Greek people of the power to meet the situation by themselves.”
But would the American people, and their representatives in Congress, after generations of instinctively resisting involvement in the affairs of other nations during peacetime, respond in time?