ABSTRACT
Harry Truman had just moved into the White House when delegates and journalists from all over the world began descending on San Francisco for the official inauguration of the United Nations. Waiter Lippmann had persuaded the senator to put in his speech a statement urging greater understanding of Russia's security interests in Eastern Europe and suggesting that a Soviet sphere of influence in the area was "perfectly understandable." Lippmann put the blame not only on the "inexperience and emotional instability" within the American delegation, but on the machinations of the British. Despite his admiration for Churchill, he saw a heavy British hand in the State Department's growing pressure for a hard line toward the Soviets, and in the dispute over Eastern Europe. Lippmann had no quarrel with the build-up and exercise of American power — only with its indiscriminate dispersal.
