Philleo Nash Oral History Interview, October 24, 1966

Notice
This is a transcript of a tape-recorded interview conducted for the Harry S. Truman Library. A draft of this transcript was edited by the interviewee but only minor emendations were made; therefore, the reader should remember that this is essentially a transcript of the spoken, rather than the written word.

Numbers appearing in square brackets (ex. [45]) within the transcript indicate the pagination in the original, hardcopy version of the oral history interview.

RESTRICTIONS
This oral history transcript may be read, quoted from, cited, and reproduced for purposes of research. It may not be published in full except by permission of the Harry S. Truman Library.

Opened October, 1973
Harry S. Truman Library
Independence, Missouri

[378]

HESS: All right, Dr. Nash, before we get underway here, I should mention for the record that during the last interview we were both referring to the 1948 volume of Public Papers of the Presidents, and were quoting from it, so, we should mention that. And also, I noticed that the remarks that you wrote for St. Croix are also in the book.

I had asked a question and we got off onto some other things, but how did David Noyes become a member of the White House staff? Why was he brought in?

NASH: You asked me about this the other day, Jerry, and I don't exactly know. Who brought him in or where the initial contact was made, I don't know. I don't know that I've ever heard it discussed. He was very capable and had a very outstanding reputation on the west coast for public relations work with a number of west coast problems, one of which, I think, was the California Citrus Growers Association. I talked to him about this a couple of times, and I think he performed outstanding work for the President in the 1948 campaign.

[379]

Of course, he's been close to him since then. Like anybody in the public relations business, he's had some ideas that didn't always pan out and one or two of them, I think, were serious mistakes, which were caught barely in time, the mission to Moscow being the outstanding one.

HESS: That was his idea, is that right?

NASH: It certainly was, at any rate, he thought it was, and now Albert Carr thought it was at the time, and everybody on the White House staff thought it was at the time. Now, once again I didn't take part in these discussions where Dave Noyes brought it forward. I simply say that it was the understanding that this was a Noyes idea.

HESS: Was Albert Carr also thought to be one of the authors of that, or not?

NASH: Well, Albert Carr, and I think I've indicated some uncertainties as to just what he was doing. I've checked my notes as well as my recollection, and he was just down the hall from me and not very far away from John Franklin Carter during the '48 campaign. I now recall that I had quite a few discussions with him,

[380]

including the subject of the mission to Moscow. Now, he was brought in by Noyes, and he was a close associate of Dave Noyes, so it's entirely possible that it was his original idea. If so, I don't know it.

HESS: In the book on George C. Marshall for the series on American Secretaries of State, Dr. Robert Ferrell states that, "Two of Truman's speechwriters, David Noyes and Albert Carr, apparently conceived the idea of sending Chief Justice Vinson to Moscow." But I noticed one interesting thing in Carr's own book, Truman, Stalin and Peace, he makes many references to the Vinson mission, but he doesn't say anything about his own possible role in the formulation of such a plan. So, I don't know.

NASH: Well, if it had been my idea I don't think I'd brag about it either.

HESS: Maybe that's why he didn't. You mentioned another area where perhaps Noyes had stubbed his toe, so to speak. Was there anything else?

NASH: No, this is the one I was thinking of. I see what you're getting at. I'm not an admirer of the idea of getting out all those books, some during Mr. Truman's tenure in the White House and some afterwards. I think

[381]

they have somewhat tarnished his image. If you're going to do things like that they have to be done superbly and these are just not done that well.

HESS: What books do you have in mind?

NASH: Do you remember that picture book?

HESS: The one entitled Mr. President?

NASH: Yes.

HESS: Wasn't that mainly William Hillman's?

NASH: Yes, but I always had Dave Noyes credited with the idea of it. Maybe I'm wrong. Again, I'm not speaking from firsthand knowledge. I just say that the White House gang at the time thought it was . . .

HESS: They did work quite closely.

NASH: I know that Bill Hillman worked on it. I'm not talking about the execution of it, I'm talking about the concept and the supervision, and I just don't think it was done very well, or that the selections were very good, and that it wasn't in very good taste. And it eventually wound up on the remainders list which is not very good for the presidential image either.

HESS: Did Noyes travel on the train in '48 or did he stay around the Executive Office Building?

[382]

NASH: I really do not recall, and bear in mind that I was only on one in '48, only with the President during the campaign at the time of the Harlem speech, and I didn't go up on the train. And they left New York and went out of Kansas City when I went back to my desk in the White House. So, I wouldn't have any direct personal experience with it. Carr was back at home base most of the time. Dave Noyes had an office and I visited with him a couple of times, and I assumed that when he wasn't there he was on the train, but I don't know that.

HESS: On the subject of Noyes, and getting on to speechwriting, do you know if he was connected with the speech that was given in Chicago on October 25? That speech was one that mentioned Hitler, Mussolini, and Tojo, and in a way, intimated that Dewey was on their same level. It has been characterized by certain authors as the "crudest" speech given by Truman during the campaign. Do you know of any connection?

NASH: No, I just have no knowledge.

HESS: Do you remember anything about that speech?

NASH: No.

[383]

HESS: All right. On your speeches, you helped some on writing the rear platform speeches, is that correct?

NASH: There were so many of them, several hundred.

HESS: In your files, of which I have a xeroxed copy of the shelf list here, it mentions the Grand Rapids and Flint, Michigan ones. I was wondering if you could tell me just how were those speeches written?

NASH: I told you last week that I would take a look at my chrono files, but I didn't do it, but I have no separate, distinct recollections of those after all these years, at all. I'm sure that my chrono files would have whatever rough work I did on it. I could tell you in general what happened with those rear platform speeches. George Elsey was aboard the train and he had a looseleaf book, and in it was a page, or actually a little folder, a ring binder, for each stop. And background material was accumulated in that folder, using standard sources: the Government agencies were asked to tell about work in progress that would be of interest to the community; the research group at the Democratic National Committee was charged with going back to the WPA manuals, and various writers' projects, to get lore; the committee was also responsible

[384]

for getting in touch with the politicians in the neighborhood to make certain that all the necessary mentions of people were there, and that they were invited on the platform and all that.

Now, when it came to whipping this together into something that the President could use, this was George Elsey's primary operation, and he was on the train, made every trip, was there continuously, and was just tireless and indefatigable on the whole thing. It was an amazing output of energy and talent, which everybody respected, but I particularly, because I know what hard work this is. Various formats were experimented with. I've talked to George about this at some length. They started out with a short format, about three pages, double-spaced and paragraphed. If the President wasn't tired and he preferred just to page through the background material and then speak off the cuff, he could do that. But if he was tired, it if was the end of the day, if he'd had a lot of visitors, or he had just been talking to somebody and just really hadn't had time, then it was necessary to have prepared material in order to cover the situation.

[385]

As the campaign went on, and everybody got broken in more and more, from the President on down, there was a good deal less reliance on the three pages of formal English, partly, I imagine, just through sheer desperation. The work piled up, and they got further and further behind, and there had to be revisions on the major speeches, so they just couldn't keep up. That was the point, I think, where very short, sharp sentences that were hardly more than reminders of subject matters and lists of names and events were thrown in, and this turned out to be the best way to do it, because it was enough of a reminder for Mr. Truman and then he took off in his own natural style, which is a very good style, very communicative style, very pithy, it's short, to the point, very terse, and oftentimes, more than colorful, but very dramatic in his presentation. Well, after this discovery was made, then the objective from there on was to recapture that flavor and make it possible through the format for other speeches that didn't have to be written out full length and released as a text for other occasions. The experiences of the '48 campaign proved invaluable in later years. This is, as I say,

[386]

secondhand from George Elsey, as I pointed out, I was not on the train.

HESS: This gets us pretty well up to the . . .

NASH: I came across one interesting thing in my papers while I was sorting them over the weekend. Charlie Ross wrote a piece for Collier's magazine, you know, "How we won the '48 election." Of course, basically, he credited the President with it; nobody else could have done it, nobody else did do it, which is entirely correct. But I had torn the pages out of Collier's as a souvenir, and I discovered on rereading it that he credits both George Elsey and me with having written a number of the speeches. I did some, as I told you the other day, but this indicates some that I don't remember. Or, maybe Charlie was just being generous. He was a very generous man.

HESS: Well, you did work quite hard on the Harlem speech, is that right? Is that what we're up to now?

NASH: Well, I guess so.

HESS: I think so. Tell me about the Harlem speech, the background of it . . .

NASH: Well, of course, this is a long story. This was almost entirely my effort, so I don't have any trouble

[387]

recalling the details on this one. It was clear from the beginning of the campaign that there would have to be a major speech on civil rights before the end. My feeling, which may have been communicated in the written memo, or may just have been passed on verbally to Niles or Clifford, or both, was that the President should be silent, so to speak, on the subject, leaving everybody wondering and guessing until right up to the