NEW PRESIDENT

New Zealand Herald, Volume 82, Issue 25177, 14 April 1945, Page 7

NEW PRESIDENT

MR TRUMAN IN OFFICE # CABINET RETAINED NO CHANGE OF POIIOY (Reed. 9.30 p.m.) WASHINGTON, April 13 Mr Truman was sworn in as President at 5 p.m. He announced that he had asked President Roosevelt's Cabinet to remain in office. Mr Truman received the news by telephone that he was the 33rd President of the United State*. His face went grey, he jammed a hat on his head and rushed from his office, crying: "I'm going to the White House." A few minutes later secret service men whisked Mr Truman to the White House by motor-car to attend an emergency Cabinet meeting.

The swearing-in ceremony took only a minute. Mr Truman, surrounded by Cabinet members, placed his hand on a small black Bible and repeated after Chief Justice Stone a solemn oath that he would to the best of his ability preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States. Members of the White House staff, with tearstained eyes, stood silently in doorways arid watched Mr Roosevelt's successor sworn in. Coalition Possibility The office of Vice-President remains vacant until the next election. Mr K R. Stettinius, Secretary of State, would become President in the event of Mr Truman's death. Mr Truman took office as the 32nd President (33rd if Mr Grover Cleveland's two separate terms are counted) with the announced intention of carrying on as he believed Mr Roosevelt would have done. The New York Herald-Tribune's Washington correspondent sa3's: "The first gesture of Mr Truman as President was his announcement at a hurried Cabinet meeting that he was retaining the members of Mr Roosevelt's Cabinet, to which the members all replied that they would remain as long as the President desired. "Mr Truman's gesture is wholly characteristic of the man, whose entire political career has been marked by willingness to accept the judgment of others in whom he had confidence and to compromise on situations through sheer friendliness. The fact that he asked Republican Congressmen to attend the swearing in illustrated how. sympathetic he might be toward a coalition Government, in so far as it could be worked out under the' American administrative system. | Dreaded Prospect "Mr Truman did not want to be a senator in the first place and dreaded the prospect of being President. Recently he told reporters that he would have preferred remaining in the Senate instead of ascending to the Vice-Presi-dency. His deference to General Marshall and Admiral Leahy and his decision to confer with them next day are obviously designed to set at rest any apprehension abroad that the war policy of the United States would be altered or the personnel of the High Command changed." The New York Times correspondent in Washington savs: "A big conundrum for the United States as well as the rest of the world is what Mr Truman is going to do. Those who know him best say that, firstly, the New Deal is dead; secondly, the United States in the near future is likely to have a coalition Cabinet. Offers of co-operation from Republican leaders, from Mr Dewey downward, are pouring into Washington." WORLD SECURITY CONFERENCE TO PROCEED (Reed. 7.80 p.m.) WASHINGTON, April 18 "The San Francisco Conference is meeting as scheduled," President Truman announced. He said: "The world mav be sure we will prosecute the War with all the vigour we possess to a successful conclusion." "The people of the United States already know well that they have lost more than a familiar and friendly figure who has seen them through crisis after Crisis," says a British correspondent in New Yorlc. "During the past months his chief care, after winnmc the war, has been the success of the coming United Nations conference at San Francisco. . "Before the Conference the United States and the freedom-loving people of whom President Roosevelt spoke so often and for whom he did so much, will have paid their last tribute to him," says a correspondent. "But it is at San Francisco that those who come after , him are determined to begin , writing bin memorial."