The Week

Symbolic Days on the International Scene: Raúl Castro, the Cuban. Premier’s sibling rival, army commander, and closest pro-Communist companion, got lost in a swamp. It is rumored that Cuba’s unemployed (50 per cent) did not rush to the woods in frantic search.

In an appearance before the Constitutional Rights Subcommittee, which he managed to sandwich between his slander of the Committee on Un-American Activities (“the most un-American thing in the country”) and his desertion of his appointee, Lewis Strauss, Harry S. Truman launched a new drive to repeal the Twenty-Second (anti-third term) Amendment. With the historical profundity that has won him the plaudits of the academic community, the Ex President stated his case in his usual scholarly fashion: “My position on this question is a very simple one: this is a bad Amendment and it ought to be repealed.” And in a way Mr. Truman is right. It is bad that there should have had to be such an Amendment. For one hundred fifty-two years the voluntary self-restraint of our chief magistrates and the healthy political instincts of our citizens had upheld the sound republican tradition which had its source in the decision of our first President to refuse the indefinite prolongation in office that has so often been a signpost on the road to despotism. It was better that the two-term rule should be accepted thus voluntarily. It is a mark of the political degradation of our time that, for the defense of the Republic, the rule had to be translated into constitutional injunction. The public spectacle of Mr. Truman proves how necessary such translation had become.

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Symbolic Days on the International Scene: Raúl Castro, the Cuban. Premier’s sibling rival, army commander, and closest pro-Communist companion, got lost in a swamp. It is rumored that Cuba’s unemployed (50 per cent) did not rush to the woods in frantic search.

In an appearance before the Constitutional Rights Subcommittee, which he managed to sandwich between his slander of the Committee on Un-American Activities (“the most un-American thing in the country”) and his desertion of his appointee, Lewis Strauss, Harry S. Truman launched a new drive to repeal the Twenty-Second (anti-third term) Amendment. With the historical profundity that has won him the plaudits of the academic community, the Ex President stated his case in his usual scholarly fashion: “My position on this question is a very simple one: this is a bad Amendment and it ought to be repealed.” And in a way Mr. Truman is right. It is bad that there should have had to be such an Amendment. For one hundred fifty-two years the voluntary self-restraint of our chief magistrates and the healthy political instincts of our citizens had upheld the sound republican tradition which had its source in the decision of our first President to refuse the indefinite prolongation in office that has so often been a signpost on the road to despotism. It was better that the two-term rule should be accepted thus voluntarily. It is a mark of the political degradation of our time that, for the defense of the Republic, the rule had to be translated into constitutional injunction. The public spectacle of Mr. Truman proves how necessary such translation had become.