Typical of our impatience in the fall of 1945, with the capitulation of Japan, was the rush of wartime officials in key government posts to return to civilian life. Despite the urgent jobs that still had to be done in the transition from war to peace, officials in great numbers in all ranks were submitting resignations. It was a major headache to replace those who were leaving. The sensitivity to criticism of men in government service grows as war fades into the background.

Public officials live in glass houses. They are subject at any time to attacks in Congress or in the press. There are few people willing to expose themselves to such hazards, especially those who have been used to private business careers. And government salaries, even for top positions, are small compared to what is paid by business. But fortunately, during the critical years that followed, we did have men who were able and willing to pass up the inducements of private life and business in their devotion to the public good. These men deserve the highest consideration when the history of their country is finally written.

Under the Constitution, the President of the United States is alone responsible for the “faithful execution of the laws.” Our government is fixed on the basis that the President is the only person in the executive branch who has the final authority. Everyone else in the executive branch is an agent of the President. There are some people, and sometimes members of Congress and the press, who get mixed up in their thinking about the powers of the President. The important fact to remember is that the President is the only person in the executive branch who has final authority, and if he does not exercise it, we may be in trouble. If he exercises his authority wisely, that is good for the country. If he does not exercise it wisely, that is too bad, but it is better than not exercising it at all.

Yet our government is so vast that branches of the administrative machinery do not always tie in smoothly with the White House. The Cabinet presents the principal medium through which the President controls his administration. I made it a point always to listen to Cabinet officers at length and with care, especially when their points of view differed from mine.

I never allowed myself to forget that the final responsibility was mine. I would ask the Cabinet to share their counsel with me, even encouraging disagreement and argument to sharpen up the different points of view. On major issues, I would frequently ask them to vote, and I expected the Cabinet officers to be frank and candid in expressing their opinions to me. At the same time, I insisted that they keep me informed of the major activities of their departments in order to make certain that they supported the policy once I had made a decision.

If a Cabinet member could not support the policy I had laid down, I tried to work out an understanding with him. But I could not permit, any more than any President can, such difference of opinion to be aired in public by a dissenting member of the Cabinet. In late 1945, and during 1946, there were three occasions when I found myself faced with a problem of this kind. The first of these involved the Secretary of State.

James F. Byrnes could look back upon a career of almost unequaled experience in government. As a senator, he had been a leader of the administration forces. He had seen service on the highest court of the nation. From there, President Roosevelt had called him to the executive branch, making him, in effect, the Assistant President in charge of domestic economy. In political circles, it was known that Byrnes had hoped to be chosen as Roosevelt’s running mate in 1944.

In his executive position during the war years, Byrnes had enjoyed unprecedented freedom of action. President Roosevelt had delegated to him whatever necessary powers could be marshaled to keep the nation’s economy behind the war effort. This arrangement had left President Roosevelt free to devote his time and energies mainly to the conduct of the war and to foreign relations. But this delegation of presidential powers had an extraordinary influence on Byrnes. It caused him to believe that, as an official of the executive branch of the government, he could have a completely free hand within his own sphere of duty. In fact, he came to think that his judgment was better than the President’s.

More and more during the fall of 1945, I came to feel that in his role as Secretary of State Byrnes was beginning to think of himself as an Assistant President in full charge of foreign policy. Apparently he failed to realize that, under the Constitution, the President is required to assume all responsibility for the conduct of foreign affairs. The President cannot abdicate that responsibility, and he cannot turn it over to anyone else.

A Secretary of State should never have the illusion that he is President of the United States. Some Secretaries of State have had such illusions, but they would never admit it. There have been some Presidents, of course, who acted as if they were Secretaries of State. They are not and cannot be, and they will get into trouble if they try. The function of the Secretary of State is to be the President’s personal adviser on foreign affairs. He has to run a department which should have skilled and experienced men to get the best information possible on any subject or problem that affects the relations with other governments. The Secretary of State obtains, if he can, the very best advice from people who live with the problems of foreign affairs, so that he may present it to the President. The President then must make the basic decisions, but he must be kept constantly informed of all major developments. A President cannot tolerate a Secretary of State who keeps important matters away from him until five minutes before a decision has to be made. Certainly a President cannot permit a Secretary of State to make policy decisions for him.

The conference of the Council of Foreign Ministers at Moscow in December 1945 produced a situation that made it necessary for me to make it plain to Byrnes that he was not carrying out the foreign policy I had laid down and that, in effect, he was assuming the responsibilities of the President.

Hardly had Byrnes left on his trip to the Russian capital when, on December 14, I was asked by Senator Tom Connally if I could see him and the other members of the Senate Atomic Energy Committee. Byrnes, it appeared, had met with a number of senators the day before and had informed them that it was his plan to secure Russian concurrence at the forthcoming conference to the proposal of setting up an Atomic Energy Commission under the United Nations - the plan on which Attlee, Mackenzie King, and I had agreed the previous month.

The Senate committee members were greatly disturbed by the conversation they had had with the Secretary of State. They said they had received the impression from him that he would discuss, and perhaps agree to, the turnover of certain atomic energy information even before there had been any agreement on safeguards and inspections against the abuse of such information. Senator Vandenberg told me that he feared Byrnes might make such an agreement because the directive under which he traveled - and which had been drawn up on Byrnes’s own instructions in the State Department - made it possible for him to discuss any portion of the proposal independently of other sections.

I immediately informed the senators that there was no intention by the administration to disclose any scientific information during the Moscow conference, nor would there be any final commitment there on the turnover of such information. I made it clear that I had no thought of releasing any information regarding the bomb itself until the American people could be assured that there were adequate arrangements for inspection and safeguards.

I instructed Under Secretary of State Acheson to send a message to Byrnes to inform him of this meeting with the senators.

“The President,” Acheson cabled, “explained that you had no intention whatever of disclosing any scientific information in the course of your present mission. It was explained further that you intended primarily to discuss in Moscow the matter of securing Soviet support for the establishment of the United Nations Commission.

“The President,” Acheson added, “made it clear that any proposals advanced would be referred here before agreement was reached and that he had no intention of agreeing to disclose any information regarding the bomb at this time or unless and until arrangements for inspection and safeguards could be worked out.”

Secretary of State Byrnes replied on December 17:

“I do not intend presenting any proposal outside of the framework of the three power declaration. . . .”

I heard no more from the Secretary of State until Christmas Eve, when he sent me the following message through Ambassador Harriman:

“We have reached complete agreement as to the peace conference and resumption of the work on peace treaties with Italy and enemy Balkan states. China has concurred. We have not definitely heard attitude of France but I hope to talk with Bidault this afternoon and secure the agreement of France.

“In my first conversation with Stalin on the peace conference he supported Molotov’s position but later Stalin telephoned making concessions which made possible our agreement. As a result of a long conference with Stalin yesterday afternoon, I now hope that we can make forward step toward settling the Rumanian-Bulgarian problems. We also discussed the Chinese situation, Iran and atomic energy. As a result of our conversation, I hope that we will this afternoon be able to reach some agreement on these issues. Yesterday Molotov held out for complete subordination of the Atomic Energy Commission to the Security Council, making it a subordinate agency of the Council, and objected to any reference to a plan being developed by stages. We are in general accord as to Far Eastern issues. The situation is encouraging and I hope that today we can reach final agreement on the questions outstanding and wind up our work tomorrow.”

This message told me very little that the newspaper correspondents had not already reported from Moscow. This was not what I considered a proper account by a Cabinet member to the President. It was more like one partner in a business telling the other that his business trip was progressing well and not to worry.

I was in Independence, Missouri, on December 27 when the next word from Byrnes reached me. Charles Ross, my press secretary, informed me from Washington that a message had been received from the Secretary of State. Byrnes had asked that the White House arrange for him to address the American people over all the networks so that he might report on the results of the conference. What those results were I did not yet know.

A little after ten that night, the text of the State Department’s communiqué on the Moscow conference was brought to me. It had been released in Washington, by Byrnes’s orders, an hour earlier.

I did not like what I read. There was not a word about Iran or any other place where the Soviets were on the march. We had gained only an empty promise of further talks.

I returned to Washington from Independence the next day, December 28. Almost immediately upon my arrival, Senator Arthur H. Vandenberg, the ranking Republican member of the Foreign Relations Committee, who had previously telephoned me at Independence about the Byrnes communiqué, came to see me. Under Secretary of State Dean Acheson, whom I had called to the White House, was present while I talked to the senator. Vandenberg’s main concern was with the section in the communiqué in which the three foreign ministers agreed to take up, “in stages,” the question of international control of atomic energy. The communiqué listed four points that would deserve consideration, the last point being the provision of inspections and safeguards against abuse of atomic power information. The senator read this to mean that we might discuss, or consent to, the sharing of atomic information before any safeguards might have been agreed on to protect the nation’s interests. I assured him that as long as I was President, no production secrets of the bomb would be given away until there was international agreement on a system of inspection.

Acheson and Vandenberg helped me draft a statement for release to the press. In this statement, I wanted to clear up the meaning of the Moscow agreement as it related to atomic energy. I thought that it was most urgent that there be no misunderstanding about our determination to ensure proper safeguards.

Once this was done, I went directly to the presidential yacht Williamsburg for a cruise which was to be devoted mainly to the preparation of a radio address to the nation which I had scheduled for January 3. I had asked a number of my advisers to join me aboard the yacht so that we might have time to discuss problems of domestic policy. We were anchored at Quantico, Virginia, the next day when Press Secretary Charles Ross received a telephone call from Byrnes. The Secretary of State had just arrived in Washington and wanted to know if everything was set up for the four-network broadcast he had requested.

I was sitting next to Ross as he took this call.

“Who’s on the phone?” I asked.

“Byrnes,” he replied.

I told him what to say in reply, and he turned back to the telephone.

“The President asks me to tell you,” he said, “that you had better come down here posthaste and make your report to the President before you do anything else.”

By five o’clock that afternoon, Byrnes had reached Quantico and the Williamsburg.

We went into my stateroom when he arrived, and I closed the door behind us. I told him that I did not like the way in which I had been left in the dark about the Moscow conference. I told him that, as President, I intended to know what progress we were making and what we were doing in foreign negotiations. I said that it was shocking that a communiqué should be issued in Washington announcing a foreign-policy development of major importance that I had never heard of. I said I would not tolerate a repetition of such conduct.

Byrnes sought to put the blame mostly on his subordinates. He said that he had expected them to keep me informed. But he now admitted that he should have attended to it personally.

Byrnes left a collection of documents on the conference with me, and I agreed to study them at once. As I went through these papers, it became abundantly clear to me that the successes of the Moscow conference were unreal. I could see that the Russians had given us no more than a general promise that they would be willing to sit down to talk again about the control of atomic energy. There was not a word in the communiqué to suggest that the Russians might be willing to change their ways in Iran - where the situation was rapidly becoming very serious - or anywhere else. Byrnes, I concluded after studying the entire record, had taken it upon himself to move the foreign policy of the United States in a direction to which I could not, and would not, agree. Moreover, he had undertaken this on his own initiative without consulting or informing the President.

I knew that it was time to make things perfectly clear between the Secretary of State and myself. I wanted to do it without delay, without publicity, and in writing. So I wrote out in longhand a letter to Byrnes, and when he came to the White House on January 5, I read it to him as he sat at my desk in the Oval Room:

My dear Jim:

I have been considering some of our difficulties. As you know, I would like to pursue a policy of delegating authority to the members of the Cabinet in their various fields and then back them up in the results. But in doing that and in carrying out that policy I do not intend to turn over the complete authority of the President nor to forgo the President’s prerogative to make the final decision.

Therefore it is absolutely necessary that the President should be kept fully informed on what is taking place. This is vitally necessary when negotiations are taking place in a foreign capital, or even in another city than Washington. This procedure is necessary in domestic affairs, and it is vital in foreign affairs. At San Francisco no agreements or compromises were ever agreed to without my approval. At London you were in constant touch with me and communication was established daily if necessary. I only saw you for a possible thirty minutes the night before you left after your interview with the Senate committee.

I received no communication from you directly while you were in Moscow. The only message I had from you came as a reply to one which I had Under Secretary Acheson send to you about my interview with the Senate Committee on Atomic Energy.

The protocol was not submitted to me, nor was the communiqué. I was completely in the dark on the whole conference until I requested you to come to the Williamsburg and inform me. The communiqué was released before I ever saw it.

Now I have infinite confidence in you and in your ability but there should be a complete understanding between us on procedure. Hence this memorandum.

For the first time I read the Ethridge letter this morning. It is full of information on Rumania and Bulgaria and confirms our previous information on those two police states. I am not going to agree to the recognition of those governments unless they are radically changed.

I think we ought to protest with all the vigor of which we are capable against the Russian program in Iran. There is no justification for it. It is a parallel to the program of Russia in Latvia, Estonia, and Lithuania. It is also in line with the high-handed and arbitrary manner in which Russia acted in Poland.

At Potsdam we were faced with an accomplished fact and were by circumstances almost forced to agree to Russian occupation of Eastern Poland and the occupation of that part of Germany east of the Oder River by Poland. It was a high-handed outrage.

At the time we were anxious for Russian entry into the Japanese War. Of course we found later that we didn’t need Russia there and that the Russians have been a headache to us ever since.

When you went to Moscow, you were faced with another accomplished fact in Iran. Another outrage if I ever saw one.

Iran was our ally in the war. Iran was Russia’s ally in the war. Iran agreed to the free passage of arms, ammunition and other supplies running into the millions of tons across her territory from the Persian Gulf to the Caspian Sea. Without these supplies furnished by the United States, Russia would have been ignominiously defeated. Yet now Russia stirs up rebellion and keeps troops on the soil of her friend and ally - Iran.

There isn’t a doubt in my mind that Russia intends an invasion of Turkey and the seizure of the Black Sea Straits to the Mediterranean. Unless Russia is faced with an iron fist and strong language, another war is in the making. Only one language do they understand – “how many divisions have you?”

I do not think we should play compromise any longer. We should refuse to recognize Rumania and Bulgaria until they comply with our requirements; we should let our position on Iran be known in no uncertain terms and we should continue to insist on the internationalization of the Kiel Canal, the Rhine-Danube waterway and the Black Sea Straits and we should maintain complete control of Japan and the Pacific. We should rehabilitate China and create a strong central government there. We should do the same for Korea.

Then we should insist on the return of our ships from Russia and force a settlement of the Lend-Lease debt of Russia.

I’m tired of babying the Soviets.

Byrnes accepted my decision. He did not ask to be relieved or express a desire to quit. It was not until some months later that he came to me and suggested that his health would not allow him to stay on. He agreed to remain through the negotiations of the peace treaties that were to grow out of his Moscow commitments. Throughout the remainder of 1946, however, it was understood between him and me that he would quit whenever I could designate his successor. I knew all that time whom I wanted for the job. It was General Marshall. But the general was on a vital assignment in China that had to run its course before the change in the State Department could be carried out.

My memorandum to Byrnes not only clarified the Secretary’s position, but it was the point of departure of our policy. “I’m tired of babying the Soviets,” I had said to Byrnes, and I meant it.

I had hoped that the Russians would return favor for favor, but almost from the time I became President, I found them acting without regard for their neighboring nations and in direct violation of the obligations they had assumed at Yalta. The first Russian leader I had had an opportunity to talk to was Molotov, and it had been necessary, even then, for me to speak bluntly and plainly. I was sure that Russia would understand firm, decisive language and action much better than diplomatic pleasantries.

In all subsequent relations, until he finally left office, Secretary Byrnes took great pains to keep me posted on what was going on. He would call daily if telephone connections were available, and his dispatches to the State Department would be placed before me regularly. It was therefore with a clear conscience that I could parry questions at press conferences during the year concerning rumors that he was about to resign or had resigned.

When General Eisenhower, whom I had appointed Chief of Staff of the Army to succeed General Marshall, went on an inspection trip to the Far East later that year, I told him that I had a message I wanted him to give to Marshall when he saw him in China. I said that I wanted him to tell Marshall that my Secretary of State had stomach trouble and wanted to retire from office and that I wanted to know if Marshall would take the job when it became vacant.

When Eisenhower returned, he reported that he had delivered the message and that Marshall’s answer had been “Yes.” When Marshall’s mission to China came to an end, I announced his appointment without asking him again. Byrnes and I exchanged a number of friendly and personal letters after he left Washington. It was not until the civil-rights issue made him bitter and distant that our contacts diminished.

My second problem in the Cabinet arose when I named Ed Pauley to be Under Secretary of the Navy in January 1946 - an appointment which President Roosevelt had intended to make. Indeed, Roosevelt and Forrestal had agreed that Pauley would be named Under Secretary and that he would then succeed Forrestal as head of the department.

I wanted Pauley in my official family. His record in the reparations program had only confirmed my high opinion of his administrative abilities. Forrestal thought very highly of him, urged him strongly on me as his choice of a successor, and had planned to travel with him to the Far East when Pauley went there on reparations business in the fall of 1945. This close association, Forrestal thought, would make the transition easier.

Forrestal had been trying to resign ever since the fighting had ended, and he would repeat the request at frequent intervals. I thought too highly of him as a public servant to allow him to resign and therefore told him that it was my plan to make Pauley Under Secretary. But Forrestal thought of Pauley as his own relief man.

When Pauley’s appointment to the job of Under Secretary was announced in January, some Republicans in the Senate indicated they might want to look “closely” into the nomination. This was not unusual, and, since the Democratic majority was ample, there was nothing to worry about. Then on January 30, after the Cabinet meeting, Harold Ickes, the Secretary of the Interior, told me he had been asked to appear before the Senate Naval Affairs Committee in connection with the Pauley appointment. I did not ask Ickes why he had been called or what he intended to say. I merely said, “Tell ‘em the truth and be gentle to Ed.”

When Ickes went before the committee, he testified under oath that Pauley had once told him that it might be possible to raise several hundred thousand dollars for the campaign fund of the Democratic Party in California if the Justice Department would drop the plan to bring suit to have the tidelands oil deposits declared in the federal domain. Ickes made it sound as if Pauley had asked him to exert his influence with President Roosevelt to have the suit dropped in order that he might raise these funds. Pauley, on the other hand - and also under oath - said that Ickes was mistaken when he put it that way.

I had known Pauley for a number of years, and it did not sound like him to have made what Ickes called, a few days later and before the same committee, the “rawest proposition ever made to me.” I knew Ickes had a reputation for picking fights. He was not given to tact and was not likely to admit that he might be wrong, or even mistaken.

I told my press conference on February 7 that I was behind Pauley and that Ickes might be mistaken. A few days later - on February 13 - I received a lengthy letter from Ickes. It was his resignation as Secretary of the Interior. It was not a courteous letter. It was the kind of letter sent by a man who is sure that he can have his way if he threatens to quit. But I was not going to be threatened. Ickes had written at great length that he felt I should have known - though he never had told me - what he was going to say about Pauley, and that my remark at the press conference was, in effect, a declaration of no confidence. Of course Ickes suggested that there were so many things that only he would know how to attend to that he was willing to delay his departure from the government for another six weeks.

I wrote a brief note in reply. His resignation, I said, was accepted as of the following day. I assumed, I added, that he had intended to resign not only as Secretary of the Interior but from his other government positions, as well. He retorted with an arrogant note and went on the air that night to defend his conduct. Pauley, however, although I backed him to the end, finally asked me to withdraw his nomination.

Ickes, in later years, began to write to me again, at first about race discrimination and tidelands oil, but later quite generally and in a friendly vein. I still think he was mistaken.

Ickes had been an able administrator in the Interior Department, and as Secretary of the Interior he was a protector of the public interest for the benefit of all the people. When I was chairman of the special Senate committee, Ickes complained to me that President Roosevelt had not asked him to the White House for six months because of a quarrel. Ickes said he thought Roosevelt would be better off taking his advice rather than that of some other members of the Cabinet, Hopkins in particular. I realized then he was a troublemaker and difficult to get along with. In a sense I was fond of him, especially because he was not a special-interests man. Although he was a scold and a gossip and everything that implies, I never had a personal clash with him, but when he got too big for his breeches and opposed me openly on my appointment of Pauley, I could not, as President, tolerate that.

My third Cabinet problem of the year involved Henry Wallace. Wallace had served eight years as President Roosevelt’s Secretary of Agriculture. He had been Vice President of the United States in Roosevelt’s third term and had made a strong bid for re-nomination in 1944, which failed because it did not have the support of President Roosevelt. In January 1945, however, Roosevelt had appointed him Secretary of Commerce, although it had taken my own tie-breaking vote as Vice President to make his confirmation come through.

Wallace had a vision of the “Century of the Common Man” about which he was eloquent and persistent. He was certain that the “Century of the Common Man” would start just as soon as the war ended and believed that good will would bring peace. He began to devote much of his energy to the problem of our relations with Russia and to spend much time away from his duties as Secretary of Commerce.

When I named General Walter Bedell Smith to be our Ambassador to Moscow in March 1946, Wallace spoke to me about what he called a “new approach” to Russia and followed this up with the following memorandum:

MARCH 14, 1946

Dear Mr. President:

As you may recall, in the course of our talk on Tuesday I suggested that we would have a better chance to improve our relations with the Soviets if, in addition to our new diplomatic effort, we also made a new approach along economic and trade lines. I am hopeful, as I know you are, that General Bedell Smith will succeed in breaking the present diplomatic deadlock in U.S.-Soviet relations and that he will find a way of persuading the Soviet Government of the advantages of cooperating with the U.S.A. and with the U.N.O. in settling outstanding international issues.

I am deeply convinced that General Bedell Smith’s task would be made easier and his success more lasting if we could also at the same time discuss with the Russians in a friendly way their long range economic problems and the future of our cooperation in matters of trade. We know that much of the recent Soviet behavior which has caused us concern has been the result of their dire economic needs and of their disturbed sense of security. The events of the past few months have thrown the Soviets back to their pre-1939 fears of “capitalist encirclement” and to their erroneous belief that the Western World, including the U.S.A., is invariably and unanimously hostile.

I think we can disabuse the Soviet mind and strengthen the faith of the Soviets in our sincere devotion to the cause of peace by proving to them that we want to trade with them and to cement our economic relations with them. To do this, it is necessary to talk with them in an understanding way, with full realization of their difficulties and yet with emphasis on the lack of realism in many of their assumptions and conclusions which stand in the way of peaceful world cooperation. What I have in mind is an extended discussion of the background needed for future economic collaboration rather than negotiation related to immediate proposals such as a loan. On our part, participants in such a discussion would have to be capable of speaking in terms of the general problems involved, as well as specific economic and commercial matters, and of relating the Russian approach to these problems to current U.S. Government and business policies and practices.

I know that we have good foreign service men in Moscow and that they are doing their best. But the task before us now is so big and so complex that it calls for a new start by a new group. My suggestion is that you authorize a group to visit Moscow for the talks which I suggested above. If you concur in this proposal, I am ready to make suggestions regarding the composition of this mission.

Sincerely yours,

Henry A. Wallace

Secretary of Commerce

With this letter, Wallace sent a memorandum in which he said that he had discussed the matter with General Bedell Smith. But General Smith had asked that he be given the original, with my initials on it to indicate that I had approved.

I ignored this letter of Wallace’s. I had expressed my policy to Bedell Smith and had suggested the approach he should take to the Kremlin. I could see little to be gained from the Wallace proposal.

On July 23, Wallace wrote another letter on our relations with Russia - a letter which later burst into the headlines. In twelve pages of single- spaced typing, he analyzed the problem as he saw it and listed a number of things that he believed we should do. He contrasted what he said our actions were with what he thought should be our ideas in the field of international relations. He recited the size of our defense budget, the testing of atomic bombs in the Pacific, the production of long-range bombers, the proposed coordination of armaments with the Latin-American countries, and our efforts to obtain air bases abroad. These actions, he wrote, “must make it look to the rest of the world as if we were only paying lip service to peace at the conference table. These facts rather make it appear either (1) that we are preparing ourselves to win the war which we regard as inevitable or (2) that we are trying hard to build up a preponderance of force to intimidate the rest of mankind.”

He then addressed himself to the arguments of those who, he said, would put their faith in force and argued that the atomic age had made dependence on military solutions outdated. Our attempt to bring international control to atomic energy he thought defective because, in his eyes, “we are telling the Russians that if they are ‘good boys’ we may eventually turn over our knowledge of atomic energy to them and to the other nations.”

Altogether, Wallace could see every reason why the Soviets would or should distrust us and no reason why our policy might bear fruit. His conclusion, therefore, was that we should change our policy in order to “allay any reasonable Russian grounds for fear, suspicion and distrust.” But he had no specific proposals how this might be accomplished without surrendering to them on every count.

I read this letter and, although I could not agree with his approach, I let him know that I appreciated the time he had taken to put himself on record. I also sent a copy of the letter to Secretary Byrnes.

No Cabinet meetings were held between August 2 and September 6, and because Wallace was away from Washington for several weeks, he did not come to the September 6 session. On September 10, he had a fifteen-minute appointment with me, most of which was taken up with discussions of problems of his department and matters relating to the world food board. Just before he left, however, Wallace mentioned that he would deliver a speech in New York on the twelfth. He said that he intended to say that we ought to look at the world through American eyes rather than through the eyes of a pro-British or rabidly anti-Russian press. I told him that I was glad he was going to help the Democrats in New York by his appearance. There was, of course, no time for me to read the speech, even in part.

I had a press conference on the morning of the twelfth, and one of the reporters asked me if Mr. Wallace’s speech that night had my approval. I said yes, it did. Of course I should have said, “He’s told me he is going to make a speech,” because everyone promptly took my answer to mean that I had read the speech and approved every part of its content.

To make things worse, when Wallace delivered the speech, which was an all-out attack on our foreign policy, he said at the most critical point in the speech that he had talked to me in this vein and that I had approved of what he was saying.

The White House correspondents queried me again. I told them that my earlier statement was never intended to convey such a meaning. I added that regardless of Wallace’s speech, there would be no change in the foreign policy of the United States. But when Wallace returned to Washington from New York on September 16, he made a public statement that he intended to go on fighting for what he conceived to be the right way toward peace. The following day he released to the press the text of his July 23 letter to me.

The release of this letter was never approved by me, but by the time I learned that Wallace had spoken to Charlie Ross about it and that the two had agreed on its release before its threatened publication by a columnist, it was too late to stop it. The reaction abroad, both to Wallace’s speech and the release of the latter, was an even stronger echo of the furor in our own press. Our diplomats reported from the world’s capitals that they were being besieged with questions: Was the United States about to change directions?

I called Wallace to the White House. The date was September 18, and it was three-thirty in the afternoon when Charlie Ross came in with Wallace and closed the doors behind him. Only the three of us were present during the nearly two-and-a-half-hour session that followed. I showed Wallace copies of the cables from our representatives abroad. I told him that he would always be free to speak his mind to me, but that when he turned to the American public to criticize the American foreign policy he was hitting at the President.

Wallace proceeded to develop his ideas then at great length. He talked about the beauty of peace and how he knew that the people of all nations had no desire but to have peace. He said he felt sure that Russia wanted peace but was afraid of our intentions.

I have never doubted Henry Wallace’s sincerity or honesty of purpose, but after this conversation I was afraid that, knowingly or not, he would lend himself to the more sinister ends of the Reds and those who served them.

Wallace had a following. I realized that his appeal had some effect. If I could keep him in the Cabinet, I might be able to put some check on his activities. I explained to him the delicate nature of the negotiations Secretary Byrnes was just then carrying on in Paris. Wallace agreed that it would be better at such a time if public criticism of the State Department and the national foreign policy were withheld. He also agreed to make no further speeches or statements until after the adjournment of the Paris conference, and he wrote out a brief penciled statement which I authorized him to read to the press when he left the White House. It was agreed, too, that except for this announcement, he would make no statement at all. But when he met representatives of the press on his way from my office, he added to the statement, and when he returned to the Department of Commerce, he called in a number of his assistants and told them in detail what had taken place in my office.

Meanwhile, at my direction, the Secretary of War and the Secretary of the Navy wrote me a joint letter proving how groundless one of Wallace’s allegations was - a statement in his July 23 letter that there were some military men in the country who favored a “preventive war” - and this joint letter, on my order, was released for publication. Then Will Clayton, who was Acting Secretary of State while Byrnes was attending a meeting of the Council of Foreign Ministers in Paris, telephoned to say that a personal message for me had been received from Secretary Byrnes. He asked if he and Assistant Secretary Donald Russell might come over and see me early the following morning.

In the morning, they brought with them a lengthy statement which Byrnes had given them over the teletype the preceding evening. In it, Byrnes said that while it was naturally up to me to decide what course should be followed by members of my Cabinet, it was very difficult for him to maintain his position as the representative of the United States at an international gathering if other Cabinet officers made speeches advocating a change in policy, especially if it was made to appear that such speeches were not only tolerated but were also approved.

Byrnes reminded me that he had submitted his resignation earlier in the year and had agreed to stay on only until the satellite peace treaties were completed.

“If it is not possible,” he added, “for you, for any reason, to keep Mr. Wallace, as a member of your Cabinet, from speaking on foreign affairs, it would be a grave mistake from every point of view for me to continue in office, even temporarily.”

Of course, I understood Byrnes’s irritation, and I had already reached my decision before hearing from him. I said I wanted to talk to Byrnes directly, and arrangements for a transatlantic conversation were made. Owing to some technical problems on the circuits, this connection could not be established, and in its stead we had a teletype conference.

Byrnes opened the conversation by saying that he understood from the news reports he had seen that there had been an agreement between Wallace and me about Wallace’s future speaking activities. He added, however, that in his opinion, this had not changed the situation but had merely postponed, and had not stopped, Wallace’s criticism. If Wallace was motivated, he said, by ill will or personal rancor against him, then it would help my policy if he - Byrnes - were to resign.

I replied that I had made it abundantly clear to Wallace that I stood squarely behind Secretary Byrnes in carrying out our established foreign policy. I pointed out that I had made no commitment that Wallace would be free to resume his criticism after a given date. And I assured him that I would reaffirm my confidence in Byrnes when I met the press the following day. I said I wanted him and the delegation to stay on the job and finish it. I told Byrnes he was doing an excellent job and that I would continue to support him.

Shortly before ten o’clock in the morning on September 20, I called Wallace at his office and came directly to the point.

“Henry,” I said, “I am sorry, but I have reached the conclusion that it will be best that I ask for your resignation.” His reply was very calm.

“If that is the way you want it, Mr. President,” he said, “I will be happy to comply.”

I called the reporters in at ten-thirty and announced my decision.

Henry Wallace continued his speechmaking and eventually used foreign platforms in his attack on the foreign policy of his own country. It must have been difficult for him in later years to acknowledge the aggressive character of the Communists, but he had the good grace to express his full support of my policy when in 1950 I decided to support South Korea against the Red attack.

On September 20, I wrote to my mother and my sister:

Dear Mama and Mary:

Well I had to fire Henry today, and of course I hated to do it. Henry Wallace is the best Secretary of Agriculture this country ever had unless Clint Anderson turns out as I think he will. If Henry had stayed Sec. of Agri. in 1940 as he should have, there’d never have been all this controversy, and I would not be here, and wouldn’t that be nice? Charlie Ross said I’d shown I’d rather be right than President, and I told him I’d rather be anything than President. My good counselor, Clark Clifford, who took Sam Rosenman’s place, said “Please don’t say that.” Of course Clark, Charlie and all the rest of my good friends are thinking in terms of 1948 - and I’m not.

Henry is the most peculiar fellow I ever came in contact with. I spent two hours and a half with him Wednesday afternoon arguing with him to make no speeches on foreign policy - or to agree to the policy for which I am responsible - but he wouldn’t. So I asked him to make no more speeches until Byrnes came home. He agreed to that, and he and Charlie Ross and I came to what we thought was a firm commitment that he’d say nothing beyond the one sentence statement we agreed he should make. Well, he answered questions and told his gang over at Commerce all that had taken place in our interview. It was all in the afternoon Washington News yesterday, and I never was so exasperated since Chicago. So - this morning I called Henry and told him he’d better get out, and he was so nice about it I almost backed out!

Well, now he’s out, and the crackpots are having conniption fits. I’m glad they are. It convinces me I’m right. . . .

To fill the post of Secretary of Commerce, I decided on W. Averell Harriman, who had been Ambassador to Russia and was now Ambassador to Great Britain. I called him in London by transatlantic telephone and offered him the secretaryship. He accepted, and I was glad to have him in the Cabinet.

As I bring this, the first of two volumes of my memoirs, to a close and look back, the year 1945 stands out in my mind as a year of decisions - a year of many trying and fateful decisions.

I was sworn in as President by Chief Justice Stone at 7:09 p.m. on April 12, 1945. Much had happened in the months that followed. The world was undergoing great and historic changes. We had come into the atomic age. The wars in Europe and Asia had been brought to a victorious end. The United Nations had been launched. Churchill, Attlee, Stalin, and I had met at Potsdam in an effort to get Russian co-operation and help to assure the peace. The years ahead were to make great demands upon the wisdom, courage, and integrity of statesmen everywhere.