President
Avila Camacho asked H.A. to attend ceremonies marking the end of his six-year
term. The two presidents were on
friendly terms since H.A. visit in 1940 [see November 1944 entry -AS]. The highlight of this trip for H.A. was
visiting the international experiment station founded by the Rockefeller
Foundation at H.A.’s suggestion. We met
Norman Borlaug and H.A. “was amazed to see corn that would go more than seventy
bushels to the acre.”
On
the 17th, Truman made a speech in New York calling for a
confrontational containment policy with the Soviet Union. H.A. was furious with Truman. Truman thought he had the President’s support
for the speech because he had given him a foreign policy memorandum in late
July (apparently several cabinet members had produced memos following a cabinet
meeting focused on foreign affairs).
Truman had also met with H.A. for 15 minutes earlier in the day of the
speech. H.A. told me Truman’s tone of
the speech was to be that the U.S. did not have a special friendship with
Britain the Soviets or any nation. We
want to see a peaceful world with all nations working together on an equal
basis. H.A. thought Truman was on board
with the administration’s foreign policy, and was quite surprised by Truman’s
support of Britain’s imperialist policies and his fear of the Soviet Union.
On
the 20th, H.A. spent two hours with Truman to try to either convince
him to make no further foreign policy statements or to accept the
Administration’s position. Truman
refused so he was fired.
