 The president of the United States, Harry S. Truman, 32nd person to serve as the American nation's chief executive. A man to whom many millions of people looked for guidance. A man whose responsibilities are today as great and whose influence as far reaching as any other man on earth. The officials of President Truman's office are portraits of George Washington and Simon Bolivar, which indicate his aims and ideals. The little town of Lamar, Missouri was Harry S. Truman's birthplace. Here in the rugged farmlands of Midwestern United States, he began the life and career which has taken him so far. On this quiet small town street in a very unpretentious little house which his father had built amid the simple rural surroundings, the future president of the United States was born on May 8, 1884. The nearby, somewhat larger, town of Independence became the Truman home when Harry was seven years old. Here as a serious-minded country boy, he grew up. Here he went to church, and in the Sunday school he met the six-year-old little girl who now shares within the famous White House and the nation's capital as his wife. In Independence, he attended public school and became fired with ambition. In this small town drugstore, he worked after school on his first job at $3 a week. The big town of Kansas City was not very far away. While still attending high school, young Harry Truman journeyed here every afternoon for part-time employment on a newspaper, the Kansas City Star. His job was wrapping newspapers which flowed in what seemed like a constant avalanche from the grinding presses. Not a very exciting position for an ambitious young man, but it paid more than twice as much as the drugstore job. When 17 years old, Harry Truman became a railroad worker as a timekeeper on the Santa Fe Railroad. This was after he had graduated from high school, and his father had suffered financial reverses which eliminated Harry's chances of going to college and necessitated his going to work full-time and in earnest. But his ambition carried him on, and within less than a year he had gained for himself a position as clerk in a large bank. He then followed ten strenuous years as a Missouri farmer and a distinguished service defending the flag of the United States during the First World War. Shortly after being discharged from the Army, Harry Truman and a soldier friend established this clothing store in Kansas City, but along came the national depression which caused the business to fail, and it is to the everlasting credit of Harry S. Truman that he slaved for 15 years to pay back every dollar that was owed. His former partner who still owns the store, and the president, are still the best of friends. Today as through the intervening years during which Harry S. Truman has struggled and risen to his high position in national and world affairs, the big frame house in Independence Missouri has continued to be home to him. It is now called the Summer White House, and he returns at every opportunity which his presidential duties permit. Harry S. Truman is fundamentally an average American, not rich, but not poor, not sophisticated, but far from naive, an early riser and a hard worker, and very much a family man. Having lunch with his family on the backyard lawn of his rural Summer White House in the little town of Independence is symbolic of the democratic principles which motivate the life of this leader of the people of the United States. The family is equally unpretentious and American. To the president, the first lady of the land is known as Bess, the only girl he ever courted, and they are bound by a deep and abiding devotion. Their daughter, Mary Margaret, is their only child. The president is seen with his sister, Mary Truman, and their mother, Mrs. Martha Truman, well past 90 years of age, to whom he is extremely devoted. This grand old lady still lives near the family farm where Harry spent his boyhood and she taught him the first lessons of being religiously good, economically thrifty, and socially fair and honest, lessons which the president has never forgotten. In spite of the heavy weight of her many years, Mother Truman is surprisingly active, and in spite of the high office to which her son has ascended, she still never loses an opportunity of giving him a mother's advice. Her favorite challenge is, be good, Harry. The president has never lost interest in the family farm lands, which he still retains. Of his own earlier years on the farm, the president's mother says, Harry could plow a furrow straighter than any other boy in the county. It was while Harry Truman was a farmer that his political career began. He became interested in county politics, for the betterment of conditions for the common man in his district. His fertile acres are tilled and harvested by his younger brother Vivian and Vivian's son. Many of the fine local roads as well as public establishments are the result of Harry Truman's early political efforts. It's a long way from plowing the straightest furrow of any farm boy in his county to the capital of the United States. But Harry Truman came to the national capital as senator from Missouri in 1934, and he brought with him the unpretentious integrity of his Midwestern farm folk, and the determination to be economically thrifted and socially fair and honest. The fate of all the civilized nations of the earth hung in the balance at the time of the fourth inauguration of Franklin D. Roosevelt as president of the United States. Harry S. Truman had been one of President Roosevelt's staunchest supporters. He had been elected by a popular vote of the people as vice president. The man upon whom these greatest of all history's grave responsibilities would fall in case anything should happen to President Roosevelt. No one knew what the future held in store. Little did anyone realize how soon Harry Truman was destined to shoulder the burden of state and carry on to completion the great work which Franklin D. Roosevelt had already come so close to fulfilling. Being vice president of the United States in the most difficult and fateful time in the nation's history, established this native Missourian as a national statesman vacant by the sudden death of Franklin D. Roosevelt, Harry S. Truman became the 32nd president of the United States on the evening of April 12, 1945. President Truman quickly and skillfully assumed all of Franklin D. Roosevelt's responsibilities. Among the many important problems and missions of duty was the United Nations Conference of International Organization at San Francisco, California to which the president journeyed by plane. At San Francisco's Hamilton Field, the president is welcomed by a host of high ranking officers and world diplomats, ambassadors, ministers, secretaries of foreign affairs, the governor of California, United States senators, and many other equally important governmental representatives from all the continents of the earth. The diplomatic greetings were followed by meeting the military. President inspects the guard of honor, his first formal inspection of a military unit since he became president of the United States. Came oppressed to the band leader, Mr. Truman stepped aside to thank him for his selection of the music. His greetings and official inspection of the guard of honor completed. The president enters his automobile and to the cheers of the soldiers stationed at the field he leads a cavalcade of more than 100 cars and scores of motorcycle police escorts which moves on its way toward San Francisco. Official delegates of the 50 United Nations had been gathered in San Francisco for the purpose of drafting and signing the historic World Charter. President Truman did not visit the conference to urge its delegates to ratify and sign the charter for that had already been agreed upon. He came, however, to close the conference with a fervent plea that the charter's tenets should be translated into long-lasting and inviolate deeds. His first words to his audience were, oh, what a great day this can be in history. And his words were spoken with homespun directness and the deep sincerity of a prayer. In referring to the conference and the World Charter, the president said with equal depth of feeling, the world must now use it. If we fail to use it, we shall betray all those who have died in order that we might meet here in freedom and safety to create it. If we seek to use it selfishly for the advantage of any nation or any small group of nations, we shall be equally guilty of that betrayal. This charter is only the beginning, that it must be made to live, and the fact that there is such a charter is ample cause for universal and profound thanksgiving to Almighty God. In closing his speech, the president said, let us not fail to grasp this supreme chance to establish a worldwide rule of reason to create an enduring peace under guidance of God. President Truman's appearance in New York City on October 27, 1945, in connection with the nation's first Navy Day after the victorious completion of the Greatest War in all history, also marked his first official visit to the Great Metropolis. His first official act was to personally commission the United States Navy's new supercarrier named to commemorate his distinguished predecessor, Franklin D. Roosevelt. President Truman said, in commissioning this ship, the American people are honoring a stalwart hero of this war, who gave his life in the service of his country, Franklin D. Roosevelt. And it is a symbol of our commitment to help the peace-loving nations of the world to stop any future international gangsters. In the city's spacious central park, more than a million persons gathered to hear President Truman declare the nation's policy in World Affairs, that the United States seeks no international expansion or selfish advantage. The return of sovereign rights to all peoples deprived of them by force, no territorial changes, for all peoples the choosing of their own form of government, our assisting defeated enemy states to establish democratic governments, disapproval of governments established by force, and equal rights for all to the trade and raw materials of the world. Warships of the mightiest navy the world has ever known were anchored to be reviewed by Harry S. Truman, President, and their Commander-in-Chief, which decimated the Japanese Navy and brought victory over Japan, and namesake of the state in which Harry Truman grew up as a farmer land, serves as host to him as Commander-in-Chief. President inspects the place on the Missouri's deck where the historic surrender of the Japanese took place. A large plaque marks the spot where the war was brought to a close. He sits down at the same table where victors and banquish sign the papers of surrender to add his name to the ship's register. Natural pride the President inspects the mighty ship's personnel, men who so recently had manned the big guns that wrecked Japan's sea power and blasted her coastline fortifications, after which he went aboard the destroyer Wren Shaw, which had come alongside to carry him on his review of the seven-mile-long array of other warships in the harbor. As the review ship moves slowly up the river harbor, both banks of which were lined with millions of people and more than a thousand war planes move swiftly through the sky overhead, each veteran warship boomed its peacetime thunderous salute as their commander-in-chief passed by. It's come a long way from the farmlands of Missouri to his place of honor in the national capital of the United States. Private trains bring him to this depot, where huge crowds today greet the arrival of this president who once worked as a low-paid employee on a railroad in the Midwest. A boy who once wrapped newspapers so that they might be delivered to farmers and small town folk in Missouri now has his name emblazoned in big front-page bull type on newspapers throughout the world. And the rich treasury of the United States of America is a responsibility of this man who once worked as a humble clerk in a small bank. He has brought to the White House his presidential residence the ideologies of a family man, ideologies which are a staunch and sturdy foundation for his important duties of state. He has brought to the capital of the United States a forcefulness and homespun integrity which sustain man's faith in the peacetime future. No other president of the United States has been called upon to do so much in such a brief period of time that is of such great importance to the future security and prosperity of all mankind. But President Harry S. Truman has met each emergency and issue with a fortitude, ability and fairness which have won for him the confidence and faith of the people of the United States and the rest of the world.