T^E BUDGET BUREAU CONFOUNDS CONFUSION

Among the roles of the Budget Bureau was that of constant critic and improver of administration in the federal executive branch. In my day this work had fallen to the products of graduate schools of civil administration. Their ideas, some of which I have just recounted, seemed to me theoretical nonsense. They were about to produce a masterpiece. The President gave them their opportunity by directing them to bring some order out of the confusion reigning in the direction and execution of foreign economic policy in liberated areas. On June 3, 1943, the completed work went to the Secretary of State with a "Dear Cordell" letter.^' Younger readers may never have heard of the cartoonist Rube Goldberg, famous a generation ago, whose forte was drawing bizarre and infinitely complicated devices for doing the most simple acts like picking up a shoe or putting the cat out. The new proposal would have ranked among his best.

The letter pointed the broad scheme: the Governor would distribute goods and provide technical advice and services for all civilian purposes; lend-lease would obtain and pay for most of these when acquired in the United States; the Board of Economic Warfare would undertake foreign purchases, industrial development, and economic intelligence; and the Treasury would be responsible for exchange rates, monetary control, and fiscal matters. All of these activities would be "coordinated" by an Assistant Secretary of State—alas, myself—and area directors. The area directors should have "ample authority to act 'on the spot,' " subject to the orders of the military commander. The Assistant Secretary should act within policies laid down by two committees composed of himself and representatives of six departments and agencies.

I shall not go further. The reader is weary. Anyone experienced in Washington could have told the Budget reorganizers that Cabinet officers and heads of agencies cannot be coordinated by a junior official, especially one whose authority is so hedged about by intra- and interdepartmental committees as was done in this case. If the Vice President could not do it, an Assistant Secretary clearly could not. In any event, the scheme was superseded in three months.

Within a week of the signing of this order, Henry Wallace and Jesse Jones tried the President's patience too far. Just when the landings on Sicily were imminent and Stalin was threatening and bullying for a second front against Germany, Wallace began and Jones enthusiastically joined in a childish brawl over the Board of Economic Warfare's program of purchasing foreign strategic materials. The President boiled over. On July 15, acting on the advice of James F. Byrnes, the "Assistant President," he abolished the BEW and took away all Jones's powers relating to foreign purchases. All the powers of both were given, in September 1943, to a new agency under the President, the Office of Economic Warfare, headed by a newcomer to the field, Leo Crowley, hitherto the Alien Property Custodian. The contestants were thus narrowed for the final bout.

In the meantime I had been attempting to persuade Mr. Hull that it was not enough to have the President recite the litany that in foreign policy he was Allah and Cordell Hull was his prophet who would "coordinate" the faithful. The prophet needed also a sword for the unbelievers. On July 10 Mr. Hull sent the President a memorandum that I had prepared for him with the approval of my colleagues Howland Shaw, Green Hackworth, Ray Atherton, Thomas Fin-letter (then serving as assistant to Governor Lehman), and Herbert Feis. The covering note described it as a statement of his views on a subject "you and I have frequently discussed [i.e.,] the relationship that should exist between State and other agencies engaged in activities abroad." Nothing came of it at the time; however, the relationship portrayed is not far from that which existed in fact in the last six years of President Truman's administration.

On the day after Wallace and Jones had made their exit and Crowley his entrance, Feis and I were summoned to James F. Byrnes's office in the White House, the Office of War Mobilization, along with representatives of the Budget, Governor Lehman, Lend-Lease, and Leo Crowley himself, to discuss Mr. Hull's request that Byrnes make a strong statement concerning the primacy of

State in foreign affairs. The representatives of the other agencies present said that everything was working well. I argued that, although the principle of State's primacy in foreign policy was accepted, the recent executive order of June 3 had created so much doubt about what was foreign policy as to make it very difficult for the Department to get people to carry on its work and in specific cases to get acceptance of its rulings from other agencies. In many cases they went ahead with their own plans, talking to foreign representatives without informing the Department. The result was that the Department had responsibility without authority. Some clear statement of procedure was necessary. Mr. Byrnes refused to issue any further general instructions but announced that the Department was to determine foreign policy and that it had the last word. This left us where we were. At the end of the meeting Crowley sensibly observed to me that further discussion would not get anywhere and that the proper course for the Department was vigorously to fight out difficulties as they arose in connection with specific issues.

PEACE THROUGH HUMAN SACRIFICE

For some time rumors of a personal nature about Welles had been circulating in Washington, assiduously furthered by his malign enemy, William Christian Bullitt, a singularly ironic middle name. Mr. Hull fretted the President about what he termed Welles's "disloyalty" to him. They agreed that Welles should resign as Under Secretary and be offered a mission to Moscow, which he saw fit not to accept.^- Mr. Byrnes believed that this vacancy in the State Department would make possible a remedy for the confusion in the duplication of our economic activities overseas, regarding which he had been overwhelmed with complaints from the armed forces and the State Department.''^ On September 25 Welles's resignation and the nomination of his successor, Edward R. Stettinius, Jr., were announced by the White House. On the same day it also announced the creation of the Foreign Economic Administration, at the head of which, appropriately enough, was the man who had not lost his own in the shuffle, Leo Crowley. To his inheritance from Wallace and Jones he added Lend-Lease from Stettinius, Relief from Governor Lehman, and Coordination from me. "One of the best administrators in or out of government," the President said of him; he would need to be.

The Governor had to be satisfied with appointment as "Special Assistant to the President for the purpose of perfecting the plans for the meeting of representatives of the United Nations on November 9" to set up the United Nations relief organization.'^ "Perfecting" was a particularly artful choice of terms. For some time I had been making and would continue to make all these arrangements, even drafting and negotiating the agreement. When the meeting convened I would be made its chairman.

Mr. Hull was more than appeased by the sacrifice of Welles and by the close liaison between State and FEA "to assure conformity of our foreign

economic operations to our national foreign policy," which was promised in October and announced in November.

The FEA was the last battle in the civil war within the Roosevelt Administration over the control of economic policy and operations abroad. However, the struggle is an endless one to which there is no definite answer, certainly not in the form of drawing-board diagrams. "Stettinius," wrote Robert E. Sherwood, "at Roosevelt's direction, made a determined effort to reorganize the State Department and bring it up to date. He drew up an enormous and impressive chart with myriad boxes in orderly array. But he found out that this rearrangement could produce no real change in the character of the State Department as long as the occupants of the boxes . . . remained the same; and they did remain the same."^^ Sherwood was on the track of the truth, but he went astray in believing that the important boxes were those that housed the "divisional chiefs," the "career men." The ones that Stettinius and Mr. Hull occupied are far more important. Strong men can accomplish a lot even with poor organization, but weakness at the top cannot be overcome by the best. On the larger scale the final determinant is what kind of man occupies the box labeled "President" and what sort of relations he has with his chief Secretary.

One often reads of Franklin Roosevelt that he liked organizational confusion which permitted him to keep power in his own hands by playing off his colleagues one against the other. This, I think, is nonsense. Such is a policy of weakness, and Roosevelt was not a weak man. Furthermore, it did not keep power in his own hands; it merely hindered the creation of effective power by anyone. Roosevelt had no trouble in commanding Colonel Stimson, General Marshall, and Admiral King, far stronger men than Wallace, Jones, Lehman, or Hull. He understood military organization. On the other hand, he was tone deaf to the subtler nuances of civil governmental organization. This was messed up in his administration for the simplest of reasons: he did not know any better.

The moral of this long tale of administrative bungling is not that it prevented our economic policies abroad from effectively helping our military effort and weakening our enemies (we shall turn to the positive side in the next chapter), but to illustrate concretely and precisely that government is an art, perhaps the most difficult of the arts. It cannot be learned from a textbook. No pamphlet of instructions comes with the Presidency.

One must add, too, that the FEA did improve the environment for our work. The reduction of competition lessened tensions. So, also, did a concomitant element of Leo Crowley's nature. He understood very well Talleyrand's admonition, "Above all, no zeal."

6. ECONOMIC WARFARE ABROAD; DEADLOCK

The aim of economic warfare is to cut the enemy's supplies, information, and funds from foreign territory and prevent his communication with it. The European Civil War developed economic warfare far beyond the old blockade tactic used prior to 1914, which was merely the naval interdiction of a coast. Economic warfare rested upon control of the seas but also used control of communication, commerce, and finance. Intercontinental mails were routed through control points, read, and stopped when desired; telephone, telegraph, and wireless communications were dealt with in the same way. Through the navicert system and allied control over bunkers and ships' stores, a ship could not move without allied permission. International legal ideas about the rights of neutrals, neutral trade, and the freedom of the seas became irrelevant to immovable ships. The blacklist and freezing controls stopped leaks through the blockade to the enemy by reaching enemy sympathizers' own assets, not merely shipments.

Another aim of economic warfare was to control overland trade between neutrals and the enemy within the continent he dominated. In doing so, it posed hard problems in dealing with both the foreign neutral and our own people. When neutrals feared an enemy such as Germany, as all European neutrals did in the early years of the war, and yet needed goods from Germany, the greater pressures were for German trade. But neutrals also needed materials from outside Europe, especially food and oil. Here lay the basis for urging them to sell to the allies and withhold from Germany. The extent to which they would do so would clearly depend on the fortunes of war.

At home the public, almost to a man, regarded arrangements to supply the neutrals as traitorous connivance at trading with the enemy. Neutrals were judged to be enemy sympathizers. General Franco's government in Spain, in particular, was denounced as no better than a Nazi ally of Hitler. Oil to Spain might go into a German submarine, despite Franco's promises, and be used to sink our ships. The possibility could not be denied. Then, too, trade with neutrals seemed unfair to our friends in occupied Europe. Under the harsh rule of German military government, they were treated by our economic-warfare policies as enemies. Twenty-five years before, the Commission for the Relief of Belgium had fed and clothed the inhabitants of that unhappy occupied country. But in the 1940s no similar differentiation was made between the enemy and his defeated victims. We waged economic war on foes and friends within their grasp

alike, spreading deprivation with evenhanded harshness. Why, then, asked many, were we so solicitous about enemy-aiding neutrals?

Some high officials were strongly of this opinion. One was Robert Patterson, Under Secretary of War, "Old Thorough," as Colonel Stimson used to call him in Oliver Cromwell's phrase. All Patterson's opinions were strongly, even passionately, held. He disposed of the whole matter of neutral trade with Germany by announcing emphatically and upon the highest authority, "He that is not with me is against me!" I first met General Eisenhower when Feis and I, urging Stimson to moderate Patterson's belief that his general principle should decide all concrete cases, were sent to the Army's Chief of Operations. Eisenhower understood the problem and very quickly got our discussions on a more pragmatic basis.

Sometimes passionate objection to the trade held by enthusiasts in the ranks caused grave breaches of discipline. On one occasion, when Churchill was staying at the White House, its occupants were embarrassed and annoyed by publication in a column by a violently anti-Franco correspondent of excerpts from the Prime Minister's notes to the President. Churchill, as I recall it, was urging some concession to Spain in return for a benefit to Britain. He was bitterly attacked as appeasing Franco. The usual stir to find the perpetrator of the leak had about ended in the usual failure, when, on studying the column and the Churchill papers, I saw that the excerpts were taken not from one paper but from two. The number who had seen both papers might be more limited than those who had seen only one. This proved to be true. Those who had seen both and knew the columnist as well would be even more limited. In a short time the FBI had the culprit, a well-meaning but overzealous assistant to Stettinius. He resigned, went into the Army, and made an excellent record in the Pacific theater.

On another occasion meager shipments to French North Africa under the so-called Murphy-Weygand agreement were held up for months in 1942 at the Treasury, where ideological positions were strongly held, despite the fact that under the agreement we had twelve vice consuls in North Africa who were furnishing information vital to the landing planned for the autumn.

However, the difficulties inherent in the supply-purchase arrangements with European neutrals lay not so much in rejection by unsophisticated minds as in the fact that at the outset we were constructing economic policies out of differing opinions as to the emphasis to be given to imponderables outside the field of economics. A chart of allied reverses and successes in the field and in attempting to reduce neutral trade with Germany would have shown the same curves. Neutral response to attempted pressure followed their appraisal of the course of our arms.

In 1941 and the first half of 1942 allied military prospects gave no leverage to economic warfare. The German sweep into Russia and allied disasters at Pearl Harbor and in Southeast Asia left few counterpressures to German demands on the neutrals. Rommel driving east through North Africa and the German conquest of the Balkans and Greece as far south as Crete seemed to threaten the British with another disaster in Egypt. I well remember the gloom

in the White House offices when Mr. Churchill, a visitor upstairs, got word of the fall of Tobruk. There seemed no end to bad news. Of necessity we bore in silence Franco's insults and predictions of allied defeat, as well as the flood of goods moving to Germany across Europe and the Baltic.

But the news did improve in the last quarter of 1942. Eisenhower and Montgomery struck Rommel from west and east in North Africa and crushed him the next spring. Success continued into the summer with the conquest of Sicily, the early promise of the landings in Italy, and the mounting Russian counteroffensive on the eastern front. But there things hung for a year as the fighting gradually simmered down in preparation for the great pushes of 1944.

All this was reflected on the economic front. The strategy, tactics, and guerrilla fighting of those campaigns do not belong in this book; they have been described admirably elsewhere.^ My own part in them took the form of negotiating with the neutrals during the periods of crisis when, after months of deadlock between allied demands and neutral concessions, the nerves and tempers of both had been set on edge. A description of the stalemate on Swedish, Swiss, and Iberian fronts will give the setting.

DEADLOCK IN SWEDEN

When we entered the war, the limits of trade between the United States and Sweden were those of the Anglo-Swedish agreement of 1939. But we had other interests in Sweden than her trade with Germany. One of our greatest military needs was for trained pilots for the Air Force. Invested in them was the precious element of time. If they were hit over Germany or escaped from German prisoner-of-war camps, pilots made, where possible, for Sweden or Switzerland. There they would be interned, but, if a neutral government wished to be cooperative, there were ways of flying the pilots at night by mosquito planes to Britain and thus back to service. Again, both Sweden and Switzerland, surrounded as they were by axis military forces, permitted, as sparingly as they dared, German military rail movements across their territory. These movements could be restricted by "repairing" roadbeds and tunnels. A willingness to be cooperative was invaluable and could be lost by policies that the neutral believed to be harsh beyond reason.

So, also, the delivery of industrial diamonds (so vital to proximity and other fuses) from Switzerland to Germany was much simpler than to allied territory. The latter required more than cooperation by the Swiss, often complicity in illegality or indifference to it. Here, again, a harsh attitude on our part could beget a similar one on the other side. Finally, both Swedes and Swiss are among the most independent-minded, not to say stubborn, people in the world. All these considerations made negotiation with them difficult and delicate.

The autumn of 1942, before the allied successes in North Africa, was a troublesome and tense time. The flow of supplies, particularly of petroleum, from the United States to Sweden had practically stopped. So low were their stocks, the Swedish Government bitterly complained, that their navy and air force were practically inoperable in case of aggression. In some Washington

quarters doubt was expressed whether Sweden had the will to resist aggression. In October my friend Erik Boheman, then Secretary General of the Swedish Foreign Office (later, when I was Secretary of State, the Swedish Ambassador in Washington), came over to confer with us. Fourteen years before as young men we had been friends in Stockholm, when I had spent several months there preparing an international-law case for his government.- He was, and is, a most intelligent and delightful companion. But in 1942 friendship could not solve our problems. At most it could smooth the path of discussion with courtesy and some mutual understanding.

It was Boheman's first visit to the United States. He found it, and especially its wartime government, almost incomprehensible. He was to negotiate with a committee, so he was told, of which I was the chairman, though he would never see the committee together. "It was generally considered," he has recorded, "that we [Swedes] were, perhaps, worth some pity but had no liberty of action and were forced to submit to every whim from Hider's side. If oil was sent to Sweden, one could equally well send it directly to the Germans. Our will and determination to defend ourselves was not believed in. . . . All in all I played my record for between eighty and a hundred people. The lack of knowledge and the misconceptions with regard to Sweden were in most cases monumental and I became very hoarse. I soon found that communication between different departments was to a great extent lacking and that different departments had widely different views. What a difference from the British administration at that time."'^

After endless negotiation, largely among ourselves, we got the President's approval to release two Swedish tankers for their air force and navy needs and to resume shipments of some other essential supplies. But it was not for another ten months that any real progress toward agreement seemed to be possible. Even that proved illusory.

Success of our arms enhanced negotiating power, as recorded in an agreement of September 23, 1^43. In return for United States agreement to continue the "basic rations" provided in 1939, Sweden would (1) refuse further credits to Germany and associated or occupied countries; (2) reduce 1943 exports to these areas by at least fourteen per cent by value below those of 1942, with further reductions in 1944, and prohibit, as of July 1, 1943, all exports of arms, munitions, and means of transport; (3) reduce export of various ores and relate them to imports from Germany of coal and coke; (4) impose conditions against re-export on all exports to neutrals; and (5) establish a system in Sweden to satisfy the United States and United Kingdom legations regarding use of United States and United Kingdom imports. In addition, the Swedish Government unilaterally announced the end of German troop traffic across Sweden on October 1, 1943, and the end of all transit of German military goods, including petroleum, on October 15.

This agreement by its terms promised allied gain; the Swedes failed to live up to it. While the negotiators haggled, the spectacular advance of armies in Italy and Russia had slowed to a halt. By interpretations more ingenious than ingenuous the Swedish Foreign Office attempted to explain away iron-ore ex-

ports to Germany not only above those for 1942 but above the limits set in 1939. Even more exasperating, the Swedish company SKF increased exports of all ball bearings and their parts far beyond the 1942 level, despite governmental promises to the contrary and very considerable British preclusive buying. This Swedish action, counteracting as it did the risks and losses incurred in bombing the ball-bearing plants at Schweinfurt, enraged American opinion. Investigation disclosed that to accommodate British buying intended to limit German purchases, SKF had built a new factory.

Attempts to obtain redress from the Swedish Government failed. State and the Foreign Economic Administration agreed to increase pressure on the Swedish Government by a direct assault on SKF, vulnerable through its substantial interests in the United States to threats of blacklisting and freezing. By April of 1944 discussion seemed to be stalemated.

DEADLOCK IN SWITZERLAND

If the Swedes were stubborn, the Swiss were the cube of stubbornness. In June 1941 the British gave up argument and placed a total embargo on all goods "capable of benefiting the enemy's war effort," while continuing, however, the existing rations of foodstuffs and fodder. Long months of talks in London between American and British negotiators and the Swiss finally produced an outline of possible agreement in December. But German pressure resulted in Swiss refusal to meet allied demands for reduction of Swiss arms and ammunition going to Germany, and nothing came of it.

Our successes in North Africa in 1943 registered slowly on the Swiss mind. They gave greater weight to the more immediate German presence on their borders, allowing the Nazis further clearing arrangements in return for promised coal deliveries. In mid-August, however, the allies thought that concessions were in the offing. They agreed to open half the foodstuff quotas which had been closed off in May in return for Swiss reduction in the arms traffic to Germany. Almost at once they learned the shocking truth that, instead of reducing exports to Germany in the second quarter of 1943, the Swiss had actually increased them over the first quarter by from fifty to a hundred per cent. They also withheld the figures from the British and ourselves until after the agreement was made. Winfield Riefler, our Economic Minister in London, described this Swiss performance, moderately, as a "flagrant violation of good faith."^ In the remainder of 1943, while the allied advance was stalled at the Gustav line, Swiss trade with Germany increased further. After months of stubborn argument, we and the British threatened postwar retaliation and cancellation of all import permits, and began to place individual Swiss firms engaged in important German trade on the blacklists, threatening to extend the practice to all firms in the trade. The Swiss wavered at year's end sufficiently to warrant a modus vivendi with them pending further talks.'^

When discussion was renewed in February, the Swiss were if possible less malleable. Their chief negotiator. Professor Paul Keller, said that his journey

across Europe to London brought home to him Switzerland's plight, entirely surrounded as she was by German forces. "To Switzerland's great dismay the power situation had not yet changed to the degree hoped for by Switzerland, and... the Swiss were therefore unable to be as tough with the Germans as they would in their own interests wish to be." They would like to begin the talks "with the questions of credits to Germany and the delisting" of blacklisted companies." We had no intention of agreeing to either. In Switzerland, as in Sweden in the spring of 1944, the eve of great events found us in deadlock. In both places the central issues revolved around Germany's most essential need, steel, and around the neutrals' illusion regarding the true power situation.

DEADLOCK IN THE IBERIAN PENINSULA

The most elusive political imponderable to confuse economic warfare calculations was the danger of a German-Spanish attack on Gibraltar. Hitler had wrung a promise from Franco at the Hendaye meeting in September 1940 to join in this, but had failed to pin him to a date. The plan called for its completion and exclusion of the British from the western Mediterranean and North Africa before Hitler started his great gamble against Russia. Franco continued to wriggle free, trading insults to the United States in place of fixed dates to fight Britain, moved to this as much by fear of his ally as of his enemy. But this conduct diminished to the vanishing point Washington's appetite for a trade agreement with Franco. The British seemed led toward an agreement by the belief that Franco would betray his ally to the limit of safety.

Hitler's target date for the attack on Gibraltar was early February 1941." That particular crisis passed when he turned his attention to the eastern Mediterranean. But the British Foreign Office never lost its obsessive fear that the danger would recur. As we shall see, the British thwarted all our efforts to use to the utmost our considerable powers to limit Franco's help to Germany.

Dr. Salazar's policy for Portugal was one of classical legal neutrality. Under the circumstances this policy both favored and was of great importance to Germany. Ninety-five per cent of Europe's production of wolfram, a tungsten ore essential in making steel armor plate, comes from the peninsula. A free market in wolfram would have run up the price to the benefit of our larger purse. It would also, as Dr. Salazar was fully aware, produce inflation disastrous to his years of highly successful work in stabilizing and developing the Portuguese economy.

Consequently he attempted to fix a moderate price and eliminate competition between the belligerents by allocating ore and the ownership of producing mines to the two sides. We grumbled and protested that Germany had been favored. Perhaps so; but I doubt whether the favor more than reflected Dr. Salazar's computation of the relative danger of German and allied military pressure on him. German troops in Spain would be as uncomfortable for Portugal as had been Napoleon's a century and a quarter earlier.

In Spain no basis existed for confidence in negotiation. Franco's purposes

54 Assistant Secretary of State i9_j._j.

were hostile, his officials' statements mendacious, and their statistics falsified. Thus with no confidence in the facts, there could be no confidence in a bargain. This supply program fell into a pattern. For two years or more the process began by cutting off supplies, principally petroleum, as a sort of rough rectification of fraudulent figures. As stocks sank to the point of exhaustion, cries of anguish would begin in Madrid, be taken up by the U.S. Ambassador to Spain, Carlton J. H. Hayes, and by London, echoed by our Petroleum Adviser, Max Thornburg, and Ray Atherton, and be derided by most of the American government and press. When it reached a crescendo after a few months, Feis would lose faith in his own judgment, and a tanker or two would be released amid a chorus of vituperation. It was not an ideal system but about as good a one as circumstances permitted. It probably kept Spanish stocks low enough to prevent much leakage to German uses.

What we got for our supplies in the way of reducing Spanish help to Germany was also problematical. We could find no finn basis for calculation. Competitive purchases raised the price of wolfram to fantastic heights, yet the Germans were furnished with pesetas to buy. The more we bought, the more there was to buy. The situation was ideally designed to spur the imagination and daring of Walton Butterworth, a most able Foreign Service officer in charge of operations in the peninsula. In Butterworth's New Orleans ancestry, proper and respectable beyond question, must have lurked a pirate, for his methods had about them a verve and dash, a touch of the black flag and the black market, admirably suited to economic or other warfare in the Spanish Main. Some reports hint at bribery, smuggling, flooding mines, hijacking, black-market purchases, and tying up transportation.^ However this may be, Butterworth's procedures were well devised for security of communication and favorable answers to his proposals. He would get ofl[ a telegram from Lisbon and then arrive by Pan American Clipper in Washington to "hand process" it (in the barbarism of the time) to the highest authorities. Then, drafting an affirmative answer to his own proposal, he would bring it to me for signature. I cannot recall that any of these maneuvers ever shocked the moral sensibilities of this son of a bishop. Perhaps Franco had made them impervious to shock.

One of these flights landed Butterworth in serious trouble and might have been his last. The sturdy old clipper crashed on the Tagus, breaking apart. Half of it floated. Butterworth, once a member of the Princeton swimming team, helped some survivors in the sinking tail to reach the floating section and then swam about for an hour or more until help came. When rescued he was still holding his brief case with its secret documents. This devotion to duty he passed over with the observation that the brief case also provided a gratifying degree of buoyancy.

By March of 1944 the quarrel with Spain over trade with Germany had come to a peak. So had tempers in Washington, London, and Madrid. To make matters worse, the allies had fallen out. In Washington all concerned, for once wholly in agreement, had demanded from Spain as the price of further supplies from us an embargo on wolfram to Germany and a drastic reduction in production to prevent smuggling. U.S. Ambassador Hayes in Madrid reported British

Ambassador Sir Samuel Hoare (of the Hoare-Laval agreement to scuttle Ethiopia) to the effect "that Washington's conditions . . . are thoroughly unacceptable to British Government and that after discussion by War Council Churchill had telegraphed a personal plea to the President."*' It was not clear which side Hayes had decided to be on now that the chips were down. The next day General Francisco Gomez Jordana, the Spanish Foreign Minister, aware that his opponents were divided, rejected our demand for an embargo.

A BLOW TO BREAK THE DEADLOCK

Thus it was that at the same time on all the neutral fronts the same crisis flowered on the same central issue with pretty much the same division of forces. It also happened that at just this time luck brought me a rare opportunity to strike a blow by a mightier arm than mine. I have long been the advocate of the heretical view that, whatever political scientists might say, policy in this country is made, as often as not, by the necessity of finding something to say for an important figure committed to speak without a prearranged subject. April 9, 1944, was such an occasion; Secretary of State Cordell Hull, the important person.

Leo Pasvolsky was Mr. Hull's principal speech writer. Or, one might say, he wrote Mr. Hull's principal speech; for, whatever the occasion or title, the speech was apt to turn into a dissertation on the benefits of unhampered international trade and the true road to it through agreements reducing tariffs. When a speech impended, we would all be summoned to Mr. Hull's overheated office and given copies of Leo's draft. Presiding at his large desk, Mr. Hull would put on his black-rimmed pince-nez with its black ribbon and announce, "We will now go over the speech pawagwaph by pawagwaph." This, of course, made impossible any discussion of the theme or its appropriateness or treatment, and reduced the exercise to one of verbal and grammatical criticism. The result could hardly be called "variations on a theme," since the same collaborators tended to insist on their usual amendments, so that the document would soon take on the well-remembered form.

I submitted to this routine, if not docilely, at least with resignation, until this fateful day in April 1944 when, on receiving the usual slip, I threw it in the wastebasket and went on with the problems presented by the European neutrals. The next morning the same thing happened. Then the Secretary's messenger summoned me to the presence. Mr. Hull looked pained.

"Are you refusing to come to my speech meeting?" he asked. I explained that I was and why it was a waste of time to go through the form of editing Leo's liturgy. He seemed surprised and with hardly more than a trace of sarcasm said: "I suppose you think that you could write a better speech." I said one could certainly try.

He suggested that I do so and gave me the existing draft. I had long waited for an opportunity to push economic warfare a stage farther ahead. My friend John Dickey, then working on the blacklist, joined the effort. Enough of the old could be left to enlist departmental support, but a new "lead" should be

added to capture worldwide attention. This "lead" would warn the European neutrals that their last clear chance to join the winning side with credit would soon be gone.

A night of work produced a draft. Acceptance of a few amendments won support from important division chiefs. Mr. Hull, surprised at the speed with which his suggestion had been taken up, hesitated over accepting its forthright position. I suggested sending the draft to the President for guidance from him, well aware that his support was vital in view of Mr. Churchill's intervention in the Spanish phase of the batde. This was done. Back it came with some editing in the President's own hand and a scribbled note that "Cordell" should by all means make it and that it would rank among his best. So encouraged, he did.

The speech plunged into the current struggle to move the neutrals.^^ With the fall of France in 1940, the Secretary said, we had started on the long hard road of mobilizing our great natural resources, productive power, and reserves of manpower to defend ourselves and to strengthen those who were resisting aggression.

Since that major decision of foreign policy, we and our allies had moved far toward attaining a strength that could leave no doubt of the outcome. This growth of strength entailed consequences in our relations with the neutral nations.

In the two years following Pearl Harbor, while mustering our strength, our attitude toward neutral nations and their relations toward our enemies had been conditioned by the fact that our power was limited. They and we were continually forced to accept compromises we certainly would not have chosen. That period, the Secretary continued, was rapidly drawing to a close. In now asking these neutral nations not to prolong the war by sending aid to the enemy, we were not asking them to risk destruction.

We could no longer acquiesce in neutrals' drawing upon the resources of the allied world when they at the same time contributed to the strength of its enemies and theirs. We had scrupulously respected their sovereignty and not coerced any nation to join us in the fight. We now pointed out to them that it was no longer necessary for them to purchase protection against aggression by furnishing aid to our enemy—whether by permitting official German agents to carry on within neutral borders their activities of espionage against the allies, or by sending to Germany the essential ingredients of the steel that killed our soldiers, or by permitting highly skilled workers and factories to supply products that could no longer issue from the smoking ruins of German factories. We asked them only, but with insistence, to cease aiding our enemy.

The meaning of the speech came through to the neutrals loud and clear. "You may be sure," cabled our negotiators with Switzerland, "that the Swisss are profoundly aware of the address of the Secretary of State and the recent action of the Turkish Government [in suspending shipments of chrome to Germany] which have been given wide and favorable publicity here."" The usual protests were made, especially in Sweden, against the indignity of negotiating under pressure, but negotiate they did. Moreover, Mr. Hull, having tasted blood, liked it. "Your oral remarks to be made when you deliver the ball-bear-

ing note," he cabled our Minister in Stockholm, "should be couched in the strongest possible language making full use of those sections of my speech of April 9 which refer to our intention to make every effort to reduce neutral aid to the enemy. Our intentions in this respect are firm, are backed by developing public opinion in the United States, and are of the utmost importance for military reasons. . . . You should inform the Swedish Foreign Minister that this matter is receiving my personal attention." The next day he instructed the Minister that despite his "recommendation that the threat clause be eliminated from the ball-bearing note ... [he felt] constrained to retain the clause."^- Washington was on the march, with the old Tennesseean enjoying his unusual position in the van.

7. ECONOMIC WARFARE ABROAD: DEADLOCK ENDS

THE SWEDES AND SWISS GIVE WAY

The tactic of sending Stanton Griffisf as special negotiator to both threaten and entice SKF proved successful. It offered cover behind which the Swedish Government might retreat and made easier both threat and compensation. Grif-fis was tough and competent, as stubborn as the Swedes, and impervious to entreaties from the British to move "moUiter et /nolle manit."j After two months of hard bargaining, and two days after the first Normandy landing, he cabled Washington: "With great assistance from your cable of instructions from Washington . .. and undoubted help from General Eisenhower, we have substantially closed deal with SKF well within the limit of your instructions."^

SKF, which during the discussions had suspended shipments to Germany, undertook to restrict them in 1944 to one-quarter of their contract commitments. The United States maintained its demand for total embargo and retained freedom to impose sanctions at any time. The Swedish Government moved with more deliberate dignity. In August a joint note from Stettinius and Eden again urged Sweden to end all trade with Germany, but this was not done until the end of December. Meanwhile propitiating morsels were thrown to the wolves: in August the Bothnian transit route to Finland was closed and insurance canceled on Swedish ships entering German ports; in September all Baltic ports were closed to German ships; later, rail traffic to and from Narvik was interrupted by "repairs" to the roadbed.

Negotiations with the Swiss moved at their glacial rate. We took advantage of the uncertainty the military situation had created in communication with Switzerland to suspend shipments. Even Mr. Hull entered the fray, saying to the Swiss Minister that "neutral aid to the enemy in order primarily to gratify some businessmen . . . presented a most serious question to this country . . . that one of these days the stand of some of the Swiss businessmen in question would be uncovered as in these cases of certain people in Sweden, resulting in inevitable friction between our countries."-

At length, in August, the Swiss put a ceiling on exports to Germany. When we pressed them to end transit of enemy goods across their country, their reply concluded with a delightful and typical Swiss statement of policy: "It goes without saying that the war as it nears the Alps changes aspect of the transit problem and has a bearing upon its solution. For this reason the federal au-

i944~45 Economic Warfare Abroad: Deadlock Ends 59

thorities keep this problem under constant and careful watch. They have thus been able to observe that traffic in both directions has in general decreased and not increased since spring. In the spirit of true neutraUty which guides them they will see to it that it follows the trend circumstances demand."^

On October i the Swiss prohibited the export to Germany of all arms, munitions, and military supplies. At the end of the month they closed the Simplon routes to transit traffic, though not the Gotthard.

Thus painfully we inched along through 1944.

Finally, in April 1945, the Swiss surrendered—only a month before General Jodl did.

SPAIN CRACKED LAST

As for Spain, economic warfare there ended in a flare-up of tempers between allies in Washington and London. We had demanded a total embargo on wolfram to Germany as the price for any oil whatever. Spanish tanks were nearly dry. Jordana threatened to end all restrictions on German trade unless oil shipments were resumed. Under presidential orders and with mutinous murmurs, we joined in a British proposal to resume oil supplies if wolfram shipments ceased until July and thereafter did not exceed three hundred tons in the next six months. Franco insisted on some additional shipments before July.

On April 11 I celebrated my fifty-first birthday with an attempt to stiffen the British through Lord Halifax.'* The main thrust of argument was the vast harm a further reward to Spanish stubbornness could do in the pending crises with Sweden, Switzerland, Portugal, and Turkey. In answer to his question as to what new points our ambassadors could make in Madrid, I pointed out that in a short time our main concern would be with supplies for our friends in liberated Europe. We would have little sympathy with the needs of hostile neutrals who had aided the enemy until his last gasp. The Spanish would do well to think that over.

Lord Halifax repeated the familiar arguments, referred to Samuel Hoare's greater familiarity with the Spanish situation, and asked whether we would agree to the British-endorsed Spanish position rather than have negotiations collapse. Thoroughly exasperated with this guaranteed road to defeat, I said so and urged that we give the Spanish evidence of determination and unity by having both.

Mr. Hull backed me up by going over the same ground with Halifax and shrewdly adding that if the British had special reasons for propitiating Spain which we did not share it "would seem . . . entirely logical and practicable for the British to sponsor the oil shipments which would be a counterpart to the arrangements they might wish to make with regard to the shipment to Germany of wolfram and other commodities which are involved in the military situation." A further contribution by Hoare to ill will and to our mutual dislike of each other was passed on by Hayes:

"[Hoare] was disturbed and indignant. He said the telegram [reporting my conversation with Halifax] was a very bad distortion. ... It omitted Halifax's 'telling' arguments with which Halifax reported Acheson had been im-

pressed. Hoare especially resented the implication that he had not backed me up, and maintained that he had supported my efforts all along. . . . Hoare said that what he objected to most . . . was . . . the indefinite postponement of a greatly desired settlement merely for the sake of the insignificant amount of 60 tons of wolfram." To Hayes's credit he did not let this latter remark pass without remarking that "if the amount was insignificant to us as Hoare stated it must also seem insignificant to Spain in comparison with its increasingly urgent need for petroleum and other commodities."

Here I interrupt the narrative for a reflection, suggested by the reports of the two participants in the conversation between Lord Halifax and myself. I have never yet read a memorandum of conversation in which the writer came off second best. As evidence they should be received with caution. For this reason, and to save time, in later years I usually had an officer present to write the memorandum. Most ambassadors brought one for the same purpose. Sometimes this defeated the strong diplomatic interest in confidential relations. I have often had requests for confidential discussions with no third parties present; sometimes an ambassador wishes to make observations unheard by his own staff.

On April 21 the President, replying to another appeal from Churchill, urged him to stand firm in demanding no further wolfram shipments to Germany until July "in the hope and belief that shipments thereafter in the second half of the year in the amounts agreed to will not be practicable." He stressed also the adverse effect of concessions upon other negotiations. But the "former Naval Person" could be as stubbornly set on retreat as upon standing fast. His reply to the President, as Mr. Hull reported it in a cable to Ambassador Hayes, stated that he "would assume the whole responsibility for settlement himself. This would involve British sponsorship of shipments of oil to Spain. [Thus Churchill outbluffed Hull.] It is obvious that should this procedure eventuate it would be necessary for me to release to the press a statement which would of necessity indicate clearly a break in the Anglo-American united front which is so essential in the conduct of the general war effort. Such a result would be regrettable." Mr. Hull reluctantly authorized Hayes to go along with the British Ambassador in reaching a settlement with the Spanish Government.

All of us resented bitterly the British refusal to cooperate in the best opportunity economic warfare had had to make a telling contribution. Mr. Hull summed up our resentment in a cable to Hayes: "I in no way wish to detract from the results you have obtained as a result of these very trying negotiations with the Spanish. The American public well knows that we have been holding out for total and permanent embargo. Because of our insistent position we have whittled down the Spanish in spite of an absence of wholehearted British support. Had we had full British support I am convinced we could have obtained our objective. . . . Without detracting from what you have accomplished I feel I must let our people know that it was at British insistence that we accepted on a basis less than the one we sought. ... I propose to release our statement at 8 P.M. tonight."

In Madrid the settlement ended in a "My dear Mr. Minister and Friend"

exchange of letters. Our attitude could have been expressed in an adaptation of the old song at the time of the Philippine insurrection—"He may be a friend of Ambassador Hayes, but he ain't no friend of mine."

In reviewing these long-forgotten arguments of twenty years and more ago, I am surprised at the apparent sincerity with which, until almost the end of the war, the neutrals and British alike voiced fear of German occupation to justify trade with the enemy. In April 1944 Boheman spoke of "the iniquity of our [U.S.] pressure . . . [upon] a small neutral country in such a perilous position as Sweden to compliance with demands which if granted would put Sweden on brink of ruin and in a position where the United States would not be able to give any assistance."'^ Later he "emphasized the grave responsibility on the part of the Government for the protection of the independence of the country and the lives of the Swedish people; that Sweden had no intention or desire to undergo the unnameable horrors of a German occupation."'* In January Swiss ]VIinister Charles Bruggmann complained to H. Freeman (Doc) Matthews, Chief of the Division of European Affairs, that "as an act of final desperation the Germans might be tempted to invade Switzerland purely for 'vengeance.' " Matthews asked him how many divisions the Swiss had, and Bruggmann replied, "Fifty, well-armed and well-equipped. [Matthews] said [he] did not see where Germany was going to find fifty-plus Divisions available at this stage of the war for a diversion into Switzerland."" Again, as late as the end of December the Counselor of the British Embassy urged me to agree to "token" shipments of ball bearings to Germany for fear that the Germans might close the port of Gothenburg. I replied that we had already accepted this risk and saw no reason for modifying that decision. The Germans made no attempt to close the port.*

Whether this proves that fears or arguments or both continue long after the basis for either has disappeared, it is interesting evidence of the persistence of habit in thought and judgment. More than this, the role played by Mr. Churchill in deflecting our economic pressure was my first experience of what was to recur often in the next decade—that is, of a relatively weak ally by determined, sometimes reckless, decisions changing and even preventing action by a much stronger one charged with ultimate responsibility. General de Gaulle was to demonstrate this; so was Syngman Rhee in Korea. In fact, almost all recipients of our economic or military aid have shown us how useless threats to stop aid are in trying to pressure the recipients to use it for its intended purpose. After the war was over I was to learn other and more drastic limitations upon the exercise of power.

CONCLUSIONS ABOUT ECONOMIC WARFARE AND OTHER MATTERS

Is it possible to draw conclusions about the contribution to the war of all the money and manpower invested in the economic warfare effort? Restricting the question to effort in Europe, I would venture with some confidence the following opinions:

62 Assistant Secretary of State

It was worth doing.

The procurement of materials for our own war production was useful and important.

The denial of materials for enemy war production was much less successful and important. Until the latter part of 1944 it was marginal everywhere. From then on it was more successful in Sweden than elsewhere.

A good case can be made for the argument that economic measures resulted in stopping important exports for military needs from Sweden to Germany about six months before military measures would have done so. Exports from Switzerland and the Iberian Peninsula probably moved in minimum necessary quantities until military measures stopped them.

However, such economic measures as raising prices and preclusive buying reduced all other exports from all neutral sources to the injury of the enemy.

Not all the arts of diplomacy are learned solely in its practice. There are other exercise yards. In the long struggle over the problem of oil shipments in the Spanish trade agreements a good deal of blood was spilled in Washington. The press as a whole was anti-appeasement-of-Franco and not too discriminating in the Washington targets for its saturation bombing. The State Department was one of them, although the old lady was shaking her umbrella as threateningly as anyone. Of course, degrees of belligerency existed within our building. In the year or so since the struggle over oil to Japan, my wife and I and Harold and Jane Ickes became close friends. He knew that I was sound on the Spanish issues but suspected that appeasers lurked within the State Department. Indeed, it seemed more than likely that some of the bombs dropped on us had been manufactured in the Interior Department's Petroleum Administration. Dealing with Ickes required some little knowledge of the man.

The Ickes place. Headwaters Farm, twenty miles into Maryland due north of the White House, was only two miles from our beloved Harewood. We were able to spend the summers of short gasoline rationing at Harewood due solely to Harold Ickes' kindness in motoring me back and forth to work.

The "Old Curmudgeon"—a tide that seci^etly pleased him—delighted in controversy. I used to tell him that, as Norman Hapgood had said of Felix Frankfurter, he liked nothing better than to win an argument, and by unfair means if possible. Only some dramatic gesture could deflect him from a debate that might become embarrassing. One day driving home he began to warm up on a favorite subject, the shortcomings of my two superiors, Messrs. Hull and Welles. I pointed out that this discussion was as distasteful to me as a parallel one about him would be for his assistant secretaries. But on he went. As we approached a traffic light, I asked Carl, his chauffeur, to pull over to the curb, as I was getting out.

"How will you get home?" Harold Ickes asked. I replied that it was time I learned how to thumb a ride.

"I believe you're just damned fool enough to do it," he went on. "Sit down and I'll shut up." I relaxed and he shifted the debate to safer ground.

So when Mr. Hull, during the oil-to-Spain controversy, received a letter

Economic Warfare Abroad: Deadlock Ends 63

from his Cabinet colleague bitterly attacking our Petroleum Adviser, Max Thornburg, I intervened. The letter, copies of which had been sent to the President, Vice President, and others, charged that Thornburg, one of the officers principally concerned with the Spanish oil problem, was improperly influenced by connections in the oil industry. It was true that Thornburg, like Churchill, was in favor of a more liberal oil allowance to Spain than were most of the rest of us, but he was no more moved to judgment by improper influences than Churchill was. While Harold Ickes' charges were quite unfounded, the source of the argument ad hominem was not obscure. The Petroleum Adviser to Ickes had been a rival officer in the same company with Thornburg. Their opinions of one another were not laudatory, and this was not the first spat they had had. Since the oil controversy provided enough inflammable material without added charges of this nature, I asked Mr. Hull to allow me to handle the matter and he, glad to be rid of the whole disagreeable business, assented.

Max Thornburg agreed to my plan. I telephoned Harold Ickes, told him that Mr. Hull had demanded an investigation of his charges, and said that one would be held that afternoon, with witnesses to be sworn and their testimony reported.

"Investigation!" he roared. "Before whom?"

"Before you," I said.

"What in hell is going on?" he demanded. "Are you crazy?" I explained that I was not; that, although it was well known that he was a curmudgeon, I was betting that he was an honest curmudgeon and would be willing to hear and decide upon the evidence my contention that he was mistaken about Thornburg. As the enormity and, at the same time, the humor of my effrontery sank in, he murmured, "Well, I'll be damned," and set an hour to receive us.

We went through with the judicial farce: witnesses sworn by a court reporter, testimony taken stenographically, and cross-examination offered to the Solicitor of Interior—now an eminent justice. The substance of the charges was disproved. No improper interest in conflict with Thornburg's duty had influenced his advice. Ickes agreed to this and was about to dismiss us when I pointed out that the retraction, like the charges, should be in writing and go to the same people. He agreed to this, also, and called a secretary and dictated an ungrudging letter saying that on further investigation he found that he had been mistaken and withdrew what he had said. A copy was given to the reporter.

We had risen to leave when in an audible sotto voce Harold added, as a postscript, "Anyway, I stiff think he's a so-and-so."

"Mr. Thornburg," I said, "resume the stand. Do you know the ordinary and usual meaning of the term Secretary Ickes has just used?"

"Oh my lord," Harold shouted, "skip it. I withdraw that, too. Now get out of here and let me do some work."

"Good-bye," I said, as we filed out. "Ill see you at six o'clock." And I did.

8. PREPARATION FOR AN UNKNOWN WORLD

THE ESTABLISHMENT ORGANIZES^

After an abortive start in 1940, Mr. Hull and his chief lieutenant, Leo Pasvol-sky, laid out in the next year a plan and organization for a massive inquiry into the problems of the postwar world. A network of committees was charged with encyclopedic projects of research. They met faithfully. The record shows—a record that later President Truman directed me to have compiled and published-—that the economic work was divided between two committees of overlapping membership, of which Berle was chairman of one and I of the other. The combined committees met twenty-six times under Berle's chairmanship and fourteen times under mine. Yet I cannot remember one of these meetings. Neither can I recall any other meetings. Paging through the printed report, the whole effort, except for two results, seems to have been a singularly sterile one, uninspired by gifts either of insight or prophecy. One of these results was the foundation work for the United Nations Charter; the other, which laid an even broader foundation, the education of Senator Arthur Vandenberg to understanding that beyond the borders of the United States existed a "vast external realm," which could and would affect profoundly our interests and our destiny.

However, some preparations for the future went on outside the Hull-Pasvolsky establishment. These centered principally on planning for the surrender and occupation of Germany through the tripartite Commission for Europe; convening international conferences to deal with food, agriculture, relief, and rehabilitation; and making international monetary and financial arrangements.

With the first of these I had nothing whatever to do, either in the first phase when the political terms of surrender, zones of occupation, and the like were determined, in the later work for the Quebec conference where the conception of Germany as a group of agricultural states appeared, or finally in preparation for the Potsdam meeting in 1945. My part lay wholly in the work of the international conferences of 1943 and 1944.

EVENTS intrude

Hardly settled in the State Department, I found that I had inherited a correspondence with an old friend of my Treasury days,^ Sir Frederick Leith-Ross,

then Director General of the British Ministry of Economic Warfare. He and my predecessor, Henry Grady, had been corresponding on what was called "the surplus problem," or how to deal with such staples of world trade as wheat, cotton, wool, and coffee, the markets for which had been disrupted by the war and which had not yet been taken over for purchase and distribution by the combined United States-United Kingdom boards. Grady and Leith-Ross had not gotten far, but far enough to have identified, as one of the aspects of the problem, the future restocking and supplying of Europe once it had been freed from German occupation. This Leith-Ross mentioned to me almost casually in February 1941, suggesting that "relief of destitute areas" might "appropriately be handled by private charitable organisations." As yet none of us had any conception of the dimensions of the problems about to engulf us.

Maynard Keynes's visit to Washington in the early summer of 1941 made possible long talks with him, which opened up the far-reaching complexities of the field into which Leith-Ross and I had—at least on my part—innocently entered. These complexities ranged far beyond those of international commodity agreements and raised again most of the questions brought out by our contemporaneous discussion of Article VII of the lend-lease agreement. They were inextricably entwined with the issues of commercial and monetary policy of an expanding and open world economy. As June merged into July, I became convinced that the postwar relief problem must be separated from this congeries of economic problems. The European governments-in-exile pushed the British Governrhent toward the same conclusion.

These exiles fretted restlessly in London, wanting to do something for their distressed fellow countrymen, finding little to be done, and worrying about the result of their inactivity upon opinion at home. More and more they wanted to buy supplies for postwar use, fearing to be caught unprepared by an early liberation yet not wishing to upset military purchasing for a long war.

In July messages crossed between London and Washington. One came from Eden telling us of his plans for an early-autumn meeting of the exiled governments to consider plans for the supply of food and raw materials to Europe after liberation. Another was from me to Leith-Ross, telling him of my talks with Keynes and agreeing with two suggestions of his—to postpone tackling the longer-range complexities of the commodities problem in favor of the more immediate need of planning postwar relief, and to begin by inviting the exiled governments to prepare a list of, say, their first six months' requirements after liberation to be put together with other needs for planning purposes. Thus seeds planted in London and Washington, probably in both places by Keynes, sprouted simultaneously.

In late September the meeting authorized joint studies under Leith-Ross's chairmanship and with the aid of a bureau of British civil servants under his direction. An American "observer" would keep us informed. Leith-Ross wrote me that he would come to Washington to talk with us about the next steps. There seemed plenty of time for that. Then urgency came from unexpected quarters—from the Russians and from the governments-in-exile.

In January 1942 the Russians tossed into the London arena the first sug-

gestion of an internationally controlled, manned, and operated relief organization with many of the Russian features with which later we were to become familiar. Ambassador Winant asked for our views. While we were assembling these, Noel Hall reported cables from Leith-Ross which told us that the Dutch and Norwegians had quietly sent missions to South America to begin buying for postwar use on their own. Apparently allies large and small had become suspicious of Britons bearing gifts over which they appeared determined to retain control. Two practical considerations determined policy—one, to suppress rebellion where we could; two. General Forrest's famous formula: ''If you can't lick 'em, join 'em." We dealt with both simultaneously, and the dealing fell to me.

May was the month of movement and decision. The Russian proposal had received wide study in the Department. It proposed to build up the Inter-Allied Committee for Postwar Requirements into an international organization with powers. The membership should be Australia, Belgium, Canada, Czechoslovakia, Free France, Great Britain, Greece, India, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway, Poland, the Soviet Union, South Africa, and Yugoslavia. The absence of the United States was later rectified.

All countries should be "on the basis of equality," and all decisions of the committee should be by unanimous vote of the representatives, ratified by unanimous endorsement of the governments.

The committee should have a secretariat of four or five—representatives of Great Britain and the Soviet Union, and two or three delegates representing all the others. It should have two commissions of experts, one on food and raw materials, the other on transport.

The tasks of the committee should be: (1) to prepare food- and raw-material-requirement estimates of "countries occupied and robbed by Hitlerite Germany and her European accomplices"; (2) to estimate food and raw-material resources of member countries, the United States, and others which could be used to meet requirements; (3) to allocate resources among the various countries; (4) to find means of purchasing these resources "by the countries which experienced especially severe suffering from Hitler's aggression"; (5) to study prices and control of prices of foods and raw materials to combat speculation, but not to buy or sell these commodities.

It was immediately clear that this plan had grave defects and risked serious distortion and dislocation of postwar arrangements. It gave preference to the needs of invaded European countries over those of other belligerent, neutral, or enemy countries (the last contrary to Article 4 of the Atlantic Charterf), both in Europe and Asia and in other continents. Its scope extended beyond relief and threatened to invade economic and commercial policy. The position of the Soviet Union and its negative power of veto would give it a dominant position where its political and economic policies might well be at variance with those of Western nations.

The best procedure seemed to be to declare our agreement "in principle"

with both British and Soviet ideas and then make principle specific by putting forward our own proposal. This we did in a long telegram to London on May 7. Before going into it, I must discuss the sterner measures taken to suppress trouble elsewhere.

In April the British and we made an effort to restrain the Dutch and Norwegians from making purchases on their own for postwar relief supplies by appealing to the better angels of their nature. We were about to lay a comprehensive postwar arrangement before them; to anticipate it by individual purchases only confused both the conduct of war supply and the arrangement of orderly postwar relief. Their entrance on the scene now would also inflate prices and create preferences. We urged them to desist. The result was to bring the Yugoslavs and Greeks into the act also. In both Washington and London the Norwegians put on a major offensive, protesting through their Prime Minister and their Foreign Minister, Trygve Lie (later the first Secretary General of the United Nations), against the restrictions imposed upon them. Then they proceeded to act. The British and we concerted plans and acted, too, with instantaneous effect.

On July 1 an irate Norwegian Ambassador, Wilhelm Morgenstierne, my old friend of twenty years before when we were colleagues in an arbitration at The Hague, stormed into the Department in articulate protest, saying that the Chief Cable Censor had held up cables attempting to establish credits in South America for a Norwegian shipping and supply mission. The battle was sharp and spirited. When the smoke cleared, the Norwegians had agreed in exchange for these credits to postpone further purchases until some joint solution of the relief problem could be worked out, to open no further credits in Latin America without prior consultation with us, and to sell for the common war effort all existing or future purchases not needed for the Norwegian merchant marine or armed forces. Later this arrangement was extended to the other governments-in-exile.

We had made clear that our position against individual preparation for relief had more than pure reason to support it and was accompanied by an offer of collective preparation for a common effort.

The next order of business was to get our own house in order. This involved putting some one person in charge of the relief discussions and getting the President's approval of the program. As in the case of the freezing operation, on paper policy direction was under Berle, while I had in fact been carrying the ball. Leith-Ross was expected by the end of June. Decisions were urgently needed. When Leith-Ross arrived, Mr. Hull informed him that I was to be in charge and authorized me to discuss with him and the Russian and Chinese ambassadors a draft relief agreement. The next year was devoted to that discussion, which gradually extended to representatives of other foreign powers and of our own House and Senate. In these months I was initiated into two arts in which in later years I attained some proficiency—one the art of chairmanship, the other that of congressional relations.

THE FOUR WISE MEN

From January to June a group of four worked out a draft agreement, starting with our governmental paper. Our group was a congenial one, often escaping from the confines of an uninspiring agenda to speculate about the world which was to be. Tall and gaunt Lord Halifax, the British Ambassador in Washington, an English aristocrat reminiscent of the second quarter of the nineteenth century, might have been Lord Melbourne, mentor of the young Victoria, if he had been a bit handsomer, lighter, and more amusing. His manner, courteous and apparently hesitating, avoided obstinacy by circuitous restatement of the same position so that it kept reappearing as a new one.

Maxim Litvinov, an old bolshevik but an old-school Russian as well, also understood the forms and uses of courtesy, as some of the new types in the Soviet establishment did not. Roly-poly, short, and voluble, he presented an amusing antithesis to Lord Halifax, never bothering to cloak stubbornness, but making his points clearly and courteously. Mme. Litvinov, a pleasant Englishwoman and a painting companion of my wife, turned up often by the fall of protocol cards as my dinner partner. I recall that she often sought comfort at dinner by escaping the confinement of her evening slippers. Occasionally one would wander off and my longer legs would be needed to retrieve it. Once a slipper strayed too far, so that when the guests rose from the table I had to dive to find it.

The Chinese Ambassador, Wei Tao-ming, had recently taken over his post and the UNRRA discussions from Ambassador Hu Shih, a distinguished Chinese scholar who had undertaken to diminish my vast ignorance of Confucian and Buddhist thought. From him I learned that the Chinese mind, like my own, was baffled by the mysticism of most religious teaching and found itself more at home with ethical and philosophic concepts. This was why, he thought. Buddhism had made so little headway in China, which had few, if any, great religious leaders.

Before we began—our first meeting took place on January 11, 1943—my own ideas of the postwar problem had grown from the time when Leith-Ross suggested, and I agreed, that private philanthropic organizations could play a large part in it. We were all thinking then of the task as a "restocking" operation, building up supplies of food and raw materials, soup kitchens, and inventories. Meanwhile bombing and obsolescence had pointed to a larger problem, and the word "rehabilitation" was added to "relief." The occupied countries must not merely be fed, they must be helped to be self-supporting. We were still four years away from grasping the true dimensions of the problem, solemnly reassuring one another that international finance, investment, and reconstruction were something wholly different and not at all pressing. "I have assumed," cabled Winant, "that the relief organization was to be concerned only with relief. ... I note, however, that the word 'rehabilitation' is added to relief in the new draft of the relief agreement. I would be interested to know the definition given the word in this context."

A good question it was, but never answered. To us the word had no definition; rather it was a propitiation by ignorance of the unknown. UNRRA would have done its work and passed away before we were to know what "rehabihta-tion" really required from us, and General Marshall was to outline the task at Harvard.

The interesting developments in this story for the first three quarters of 1943 were the emergence of Russian attitudes, of which we were to become increasingly and painfully aware as time went on, and the development of executive-congressional interplay, which was to make so vast a difference in the position of the United States after the second phase of the European Civil War from its confusion after the first. The development of UNRRA played a special part in this.

At our first meeting Litvinov uncovered the classic Soviet positions toward international institutions. Nothing might be done within any country without that country's consent and except through its agencies; decisions by UNRRA must be unanimous; an Executive Committee consisting of China, the Soviet Union, Great Britain, and the United States, also acting unanimously, should be the supreme power when the full membership was not in session; actions of the Director General must be subject to constant review and approval or rejection by the Executive Committee, which might also dismiss him; regional committees must have broad powers over action within their regions; and the Soviet Union and Great Britain must be permanent members of the Committee for Europe. One can recognize the now familiar pattern by which the Soviet Union has sought in the quarter century since the war to protect itself from foreign penetration and to insure its power to negate any international action uncongenial to Soviet designs. We were present, so to speak, at the creation of the pattern.

On the whole, the three of us did rather better with the USSR in our negotiation than many of our successors have done since, not due, I hasten to add, to our skill but to the Soviet desire for relief assistance. Litvinov was adamant on the first point, that nothing should be done in any given country except with that country's consent and as it chose. In vain we argued that this must be the case in any country with an established government such as the Soviet Union, but that his provision would lead to confusion and delay in many areas in Europe where contending groups might be struggling for power. Relief, we said with righteous fervor, must be kept free from politics. The idea amused Litvinov. In the Soviet Union nothing was free from politics. His amendment appeared in the next draft circulated on March 25, 1943."*

On the second point—the demand for unanimity—we won, perhaps for the last time in any such negotiations. I suggested avoiding any fixed rule for voting; sometimes, perhaps normally, a majority should control; sometimes, a larger proportion; on occasion, unanimity might be necessary because of the very nature of the question. These situations should be spelled out. When I pulled a rather long bow by foreseeing trouble from a stubborn individual blocking action though not instructed to do so, Litvinov found the situation beyond his imagination.'^ Not until the final draft of September 1943 was this troublesome question solved by the adoption of majority rule, except in case of

three actions by the Executive Committee: the nomination and removal of the Director General and the recommendation to the membership of common action outside the relief field.

This solution neatly checkmated the Soviet attempt to make the Director General a mere creature of the Executive Committee and brought us to the composition of that body. Here Wei, Litvinov, and I were united against Lord Halifax, who wanted to add three more and suggested Canada, Brazil, and a European country. This we were sure would open Pandora's box. British persistence suggested that a commitment had been made to Canada. A call on me by Lester B. Pearson, then Minister Counselor of the Canadian Legation and later Prime Minister, confirmed the idea. Membership on the Executive Committee was important to Canada, he said, because his country would be a large supplier of relief. I suggested chairmanship of the Committee on Supplies as more appropriate. He was interested but doubtful and must confer with Ottawa.

Ottawa raised the matter to the plane of high principle upon which the Department of External Affairs prefers to rest Canada's more mundane interests. There were "great practical difficulties in creating effective international agencies that are properly representative. . . . These difficulties are a challenge to statesmanship [in this case, apparently, to American statesmanship]; they must be faced and on their solution depends in large measure the possibility of enduring peace. No lasting international system can be based on ... a few large Powers' . . . denial of the democratic principle. ... It would ... be unreal."*' Canadian membership on the executive committee of UNRRA seemed a small price to pay for all this and heaven too.

Yet the Canadians settled for less—a secret deal that a Canadian should be chairman of the Committee on Supplies and sit with the Executive Committee whenever it discussed supplies. Thus did statesmanship meet the challenge.

Thus, also, it met the challenge of Litvinov's demand for a Soviet Deputy Director General and membership on the Committee of Europe, when these were supported by similar claims from China. We raised the Sino-Soviet claims to the level of a general principle, which, although not insuring a lasting peace or the democratic principle, was very real. 'Tt would be natural and desirable," I reported to my three colleagues, "that in the appointment of Deputy Directors General nationals of [Executive Committee] countries would be included in their number. When Deputies are assigned responsibilities and duties in connection with the Administration's work in the European region and in the Far Eastern region, it is anticipated that among their number would be" Soviet and Chinese deputies respectively.' They heartily agreed that such results would, indeed, be natural, desirable, and to be anticipated.

By the first of June our group had cleared its hurdles and was prepared to submit its work to the critical appraisal of "the United Nations." The organization was a simple one. The members, present and future signers of the United Nations declaration, formed the council, which should meet twice a year. A Central Committee exercised its powers in between times. A Director General was to handle operations. All power to give or not to give, or to distribute in

other ways, was retained by the member states. President Roosevelt explained the situation to the "congressional leaders" (none of whom were on either the Foreign Affairs or the Foreign Relations Committee), who showed little interest, and then published the agreement for information and discussion. We expected about as much comment as a Red Cross drive evokes, and could not have been more wrong.

The Vandenberg Saga • Without warning a hurricane struck. The word is used advisedly to describe a severe cyclonic disturbance caused by hot air revolving counterclockwise (in fact, it turned the clock back about four months). Its center was filled with a large mass of cumulonimbus cloud, often called Arthur Vandenberg, producing heavy word fall. Senator Vandenberg, for whom I came to have great respect and considerable affection, had the rare capacity for instant indignation, often before he understood an issue, or even that there was one. Furthermore, he was just emerging from his isolationist chrysalis and had not yet learned to manage his new wings. So he fired off letters to Mr. Hull and to Senator Charles McNary and Representative Joseph Martin, the congressional minority leaders who had apparently remained calm after exposure to the UNRRA draft agreement.^ In the letters he asked the Secretary whether the draft would be submitted to Congress for approval and the congressmen whether they had agreed to the contrary. The latter replied—as well they might —that they had never agreed to bypass the Congress. This fed the hot flame of Senator Vandenberg's indignation, which huffed and puffed around the Senate press gallery. There hounds scented a controversy, which is to journalism what a fox is to fox hunting. Soon the whole pack, kenneled too long by war-induced unanimity, was in full cry.

Then we in the State Department, misled by Pope's aphorism, "He's armed without that's innocent within," made a bad mistake. We should have answered Senator Vandenberg that of course everything would and must be submitted to the Congress since American participation would be wholly dependent upon Congress to both authorize and appropriate the funds with which to do so. Instead, we had drafted for Mr. Hull a short, technical reply saying, "It has been decided, after consultation with the majority and minority leaders of both houses of Congress, that the United States participation in the establishment of this United Nations' administration should be through an executive agreement." To Vandenberg, and to the whole isolationist press, this meant the opposite of the truth and that the Congress was to be bypassed—and especially the Senate, where Vandenberg immediately introduced a resolution to inquire whether the agreement "partakes of the nature of a treaty and should be submitted to the Senate for ratification."^

An ecstatic phrase in the draft, by which "each member government pledge[d] its full support to the Administration, within the limits of available resources and subject to the requirements of its constitutional procedure," aroused the anti-New Dealer in Vandenberg to rotund hyperbole. The draft, he wrote, "pledged our total resources to whatever illimitable scheme for relief and rehabilitation all around the world our New Deal crystal gazers might desire to

pursue . .. [with] no interference with this world-wide prospectus as it might be conceived by Roosevelt, Lehman, Hopkins and Co., until that long last moment when Congress would be confronted with a 'fait accompli.' "^°

Our mistake, however, was greater than a mere maladroit response to Vandenberg's letter—and we never made it again. In fact, Mr. Hull was already insuring that it should not blight the United Nations Charter as it had the Covenant of the League. We had failed to bring the Congress into participation in the great endeavor. In extenuation, I can only plead that it no more occurred to me that Congress would feel left out of organizing a relief organization than in not being included in a Washington Community Chest drive. One learns in time that the right to be indignant at either inclusion or exclusion—at either "putting Congress on the spot" or "bypassing" it—is a congressional prerogative, highly prized.

Senator Connally of Texas, Chairman of the Committee on Foreign Relations, was alert to Vandenberg's penchant for stealing the limelight. A slow starter in this meeting, he had to count on a thunderous finish. So he put himself on the subcommittee to conduct what a newspaperman called "a first showdown as to where President Roosevelt's treaty-making power leaves off and that of the Senate begins."^^ When Mr. Hull and I made our pilgrimage to do penance at Canossa on Capitol Hill, we found two angry popes waiting for a bewildered monarch with no sense of guilt. But Mr. Hull had a sense of outrage. He left that meeting swearing never to return, as President Washington had left the Senate chamber when during his first and only visit there to ask its advice he had been treated like a pickpocket. It fell to me to pick up the pieces. This was not hard to do. Time, some judicious eating of crow, and many sessions explaining to Arthur Vandenberg and Theodore Green of Rhode Island what the problem had been, and why we had handled it as we had, finally converted them to strong partisans of UNRRA and the procedure we had originally designed. We changed the semantics and no longer talked of executive agreements but of an authorizing act of Congress (after, however, the agreement had been signed and the first council meeting held). We also changed the unfortunate "pledges full support" phrase to a more sober "insofar as its appropriate constitutional bodies shall authorize." This is about the only change in the draft I can identify as flowing from the congressional teapot in which the whole tempest blew itself out.

Vandenberg, however, clung to the belief that he had wrung vast changes from us, for the storm he had started threatened to engulf him. He was accused by his erstwhile isolationist friends of selling out. All his dramatic arts were needed to make his efforts appear truly Herculean. As he later wrote, if he could "force a highly reluctant Administration to submit the UNRRA agreement to Congress ... as I have already forced it to substantially rewrite the text—I shall consider it a major one-man victory." Far from a "surrender," his was a " *tri-umph' of constitutional procedure." But it was still a near thing, as he saw it; he was unable really to "believe that the President will sanction the State Department's wholesale surrender."^- However, he did; and we went ahead as planned, all of us happy in the result and some of us wiser in method.

9. THE INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE STAGE

FOOD AND AGRICULTURE

I INTERRUPT the relief story to recount a brief excursion into another international planning effort for the future. In February 1943 my colleague Emilio (Pete) Collado, an economist, and I were summoned to the Under Secretary's office. The President, Welles told us, had decided to call a United Nations conference as soon as the preparatory work could be rushed through. Speed was important. The subject would be food and agriculture. The place was to be the Homestead Hotel in Hot Springs, Virginia, recently vacated by the interned Japanese diplomatic and consular corps. The high wire fence that had been put around it for security purposes was to remain and would continue to be guarded by military poHce. The press were to be excluded. He wished to reproduce as nearly as he could the conditions of seclusion and quiet that had so contributed to his confidential discussion with Mr. Churchill during the Atlantic Conference in Placentia Bay, Newfoundland, eighteen months before.

When this seemed to complete Welles's instructions, I asked what the President wanted done about food and agriculture. He replied brusquely, "That, my dear Dean, is for you and Pete to work out." Further questioning elicited only that the President regarded food and agriculture as perhaps man's most fundamental concern and a good place to begin postwar planning. With that we were sent off to begin our own planning.

Inquiry over the years has thrown no light on where the idea for this conference originated. Some have suggested Mrs. Roosevelt or Henry Wallace, or both, as the source, but admittedly this is pure speculation. We found no cell championing the idea as one usually does when a proposal is planted. Most shared Keynes's disappointment that, after all the high economic aspirations of the lend-lease discussions, the first two conferences planned should have been on such bread-and-butter subjects as those chosen. Since my own interest in the field and my knowledge of it were less than meager, I embraced the theory that the mark of a good administrator was his willingness to delegate.

Collado and I got a group together under Dr. Howard Tolley, Chief of the Bureau of Agricultural Economics of the Department of Agriculture, and Roy Stinebower from State, who in a remarkably short time prepared an agenda and a set of working papers for the conference and later functioned as its secretariat. A delegation was selected consisting of Marvin Jones of Texas, Judge of the

U.S. Court of Claims and assistant to the Director of Economic Stabilization, as chairman; Paul H. Appleby, Under Secretary of Agriculture; Will L. Clayton, Assistant Secretary of Commerce; Dr. Thomas Parran, Surgeon General of the Public Health Service; Murray D. Lincoln, Executive Secretary of the Ohio Farm Bureau Federation; and Miss Josephine Schain. Having contributed to this excellent start, I retired—or thought I had retired—from further responsibility for the project.

Trouble started on April 10 when the State Department released a revised notice of conference plans postponing the opening date until May 18. The notice stated that the Homestead would be "for the exclusive use [of] the Conference sessions and for the accommodation of the official delegations" and "anticipated that the Conference will be as informal as possible," adding that "plans are being made for opening and closing plenary sessions to which press and radio representatives will be accredited."^ Alerted by this ominous language, The New York Times probed further and reported on April 11 that aside from the opening and closing meetings the press would have no occasion to go to the hotel at all and that Michael J. McDermott, the Department's press officer, would dispense information from an office in Hot Springs. Uproar spread like a prairie fire. On April 13 and 14 Representative Fred Bradley and Senator Homer Ferguson, both of Michigan, introduced condemnatory resolutions. Representative Joseph Martin, Minority Leader, called for an open conference with congressional participation.

On April 20 at the White House Judge Jones tried to turn away wrath with humor (such as it was). He thought the press were "making a mountain out of a mole hill" and referred to the President's press conference of March 19: "The President was asked whether newspapermen would be permitted to cover the food conference when it occurred. The President replied facetiously that he hoped not, and his reply was greeted with laughter. This reply indicates the humor in which the President replied to the question."- Perhaps so; but Judge Jones was not the most perceptive man I have known, nor did his expressed belief that all could be worked out satisfactorily carry conviction. At any rate, all was not worked out satisfactorily.

On May 15 the conference began to assemble. The first arrivals were Mike McDermott and a group of newspapermen. They were followed that night by military police from Fort Jay, who barred, with the aid of side arms and the fence, all access to the hotel. Temporary press headquarters were set up in the casino about fifty feet from the hotel, from which a siege was mounted. Meanwhile the press maintained heavy artillery fire on the Administration ("Is this what we are fighting for?"), while feeble placatory statements came back. The press would be invited to receptions and they could talk with delegates on the golf course and tennis courts.

Then came the delegates to the conference and their staffs, escorted into the beleaguered fortress by military police. Beyond the fence lay enemy country. The delegates felt cooped in. Since the only secret within a hundred miles was what they were there for and no one seemed to know the answer to that, they could see no purpose in the elaborate security. Mutinous murmurs ema-

nated from the besieged. The conference was getting a bad press.

The President made his final contribution to confusion. The press, he said, at his conference on May 18, might just as well ask to sit at Cabinet meetings or attend secret conferences in his office, or even to watch him take his bath, as to attend the FAO meetings.'^

Mr. Hull had little interest in the conference, which he considered a mere side show to the greater performance which he was planning, but he saw the whole subject of postwar planning being endangered by the President's controversy with the press. Favoring peace at any price, he asked me to go to Hot Springs and help McDermott and Judge Jones find a peaceful solution. I pointed out that the trouble lay in the White House, not in Hot Springs. The President had what he used to call his "Dutch" up and nothing could be done until he got it down again. The trouble in Hot Springs could be solved if he and Mr. Byrnes would persuade the President to leave it alone.

A mob scene awaited me at the main entrance before reaching the military police. For once the press wanted to talk rather than question. Soon I became the interviewer and in no time was overladen with messages, requests, demands, and threats. Revolution was well advanced. Once inside, my State Department colleagues convinced me that rebellion there was at the same stage.

For a few hours I shuttled back and forth between the lines, bearing suggestions and countersuggestions. Both sides agreed that peace was desirable and had to be achieved imperceptibly and without claims of victory or defeat. Receptions could be given often and long; delegates might invite members of the press to dine after meeting hours; the press might have a convenient room in the hotel equipped with telephones without too stringent hours for use. By the end of the day a cease-fire was agreed on, subject to good behavior on both sides. I was free to go back to Washington and my own troubles with the Senate. At Hot Springs tensions eased as nothing of much account happened at the conference and press interest and attendance dwindled.

One lesson, however, was well learned. If and when an UNRRA conference might be called, we could do without military police, and the press could see or hear anything they chose. When, a few months later at Atlantic City, the Russians, citing the precedent of Hot Springs, suggested excluding the press, as chairman I found ways of burying the proposal.

The first of the receptions at Hot Springs, a Russian one complete with vodka and caviar, produced a memorable incident. The pleasant and friendly head of the British delegation, Richard Law, later Lord Coleraine, a son of Bonar Law, occupied one of the grander suites assigned to VIPs, which were located at the end of each floor of the wings radiating out from the public rooms of the Homestead. Having done his bare duty by the increasingly noisy reception, Law left it for a night's rest. As he later reported his adventure, sleep at length ended in a nightmare in which he could see a great hairy gorilla stealthily approaching his own recumbent form. With a terror-stricken shout, he sat up to see the gorilla scoop up his clothes from the floor and take off naked down the corridor. The next day he received more vodka and caviar and an apology from his Russian colleague, who had an identical suite above or below him.

UNRRA LAUNCHED

Domestic criticism of the relief agreement was soon matched by voices from overseas. As might have been expected, our foreign friends centered their fire on the four-member executive committee, called the Central Committee. With the Dutch leading, they blazed away at big-power domination as the negation of the democratic principle. In a relief organization the negation seemed to me understandable, but only the Russians, Chinese, and (rather feebly) the British agreed with me. In a meeting with them on July 21 I stated the three courses open to us—to stand firm, to modify the powers of the committee, or to enlarge its membership. The least harmful seemed to be the second.'*

We had perhaps justified criticism in giving the Central Committee the authority to exercise all the powers of the full council between the sessions of the latter. As the Dutch pointed out, this included the power to reverse decisions of the supposed governing body. A strategic retreat appeared indicated.

We retreated with dignity and logic. The committee's power was restricted to making "policy decisions of an emergency nature" between council sessions. These were to be communicated at once to the membership and be open to reconsideration at any later session of the larger body."" To discourage further discussion, the Department announced United States willingness to sign the document and go forward with the first council meeting immediately. November 9 at the White House was suggested for the ceremony, and November 10 at the Claridge Hotel in Atlantic City, New Jersey, for the beginning of the meeting.^ The President designated me to represent the United States on the council and more than adequately equipped me with advisers, liaison officers, and two excellent assistants, Kermit Roosevelt. Jr., and Edward G. Miller, Jr., secretary of the delegation.

Forty-four of us met with the President in the East Room of the White House on November 9 and watched him and each of the others sign the revised agreement. This, he told us, was a "historic occasion" and he garnished it with some oratory, not of the first quality. ("The sufferings of the little men and women who have been ground under the Axis heel can be relieved only if we utilize the production of all the world to balance the want of all the world"'— a rather more grandiose scheme than we had undertaken.) Then he sent us off to Atlantic City.

There we met for three weeks, though nothing we accomplished should have taken so long. For one thing, the Russians coming by way of the Pacific were late and not much could be done until they arrived. For another, instantaneous translation had not yet been devised. And, finally, a good deal of maneuvering and politicking was necessary to sort out committee memberships and the scope and method of operations and of contribution. I was elected chairman of the council meeting, and Governor Lehman the Director General of the relief administration (UNRRA). The membership of that firstTneeting contained many able and delightful men. I already knew the French representative, one of the greatest of Frenchmen, Jean Monnet. We had been friends for

many years. Happily in those weeks we had opportunities for long talks on the famous boardwalk along the winter ocean. Monnet gave me fascinating glimpses into General de Gaulle, who was as yet only a controversial mystery to me, and into Monnet's own pragmatic view of Europe's need to escape its historic parochialism.

Jan Masaryk was a charming, gay (and, later, tragic) figure who made even the dullest subject entertaining. John (Jay) Llewellin (later Lord Llew-ellin), British Minister of Food, on the surface a perfect embodiment of John Bull, lubricated long night conferences with excellent Scotch to the undoing of our secretary's minutes. Two junior assistants of his became my lifelong friends: John Maud (now Lord Redcliffe-Maud), who presently is Master of University College, Oxford, and Oliver (later Lord) Franks, who is now Master of Worcester College, Oxford, and was then the official head of the Ministry of Supply and later became British Ambassador to the United States while I was Secretary of State. I first met Paul-Henri Spaak of Belgium at Atlantic City, as well as Kyriakos Varvaressos, the Governor of the Bank of Greece and former Minister of Finance. We became warm friends. The same was true of Sir Girja Bajpai, Agent General of India in Washington. As always. Sir Owen Dixon, the Australian Minister in Washington, was a wise and sympathetic counselor. Later he became Chief Justice of Australia's High Court. Felix Frankfurter used to say that Sir Owen was the most distinguished judge in the English-speaking world, and when Frankfurter conceded him the palm, none could dispute it.

Perhaps my deepest gratitude, as well as warm affection, was inspired by the Cuban delegate, Lopez Castro. He came to my aid, at considerable risk to himself, when I needed a friend.

It came about in this way. On November 15 I introduced what became known as the American plan for financing relief, although it was the outgrowth of talks among Richard Law, Maynard Keynes, Governor Lehman, Harry White of the Treasury, and myself. The plan called for a single subscription from countries that had not been invaded of one per cent of their national income, to be paid as needed, a small part in foreign exchange, the rest in goods or domestic funds. Countries which could purchase their supplies were to do so, and those which received funds from UNRRA might be required to pay local currency to be used for relief purposes. Administrative expenses were to be contributed separately. After a good deal of talk the plan went through, but to the Latin Americans an organization in which they were exclusively on the giving side was a novel and not altogether welcome experience. This attitude found expression in a thoroughgoing, if not dilatory, criticism of the plan. At length Lopez Castro, prodded by Eddie Miller, suggested an evangelical meeting in my sitting room during which, after giving the brethren spirituous sustenance, I should recall them to their Christian duty.

When the time came, I did my part but the response seemed all too slow. Lopez Castro took the floor with more direct and forceful language. His colleagues, he said, reminded him of a familiar scene at a great fiesta. He pictured the square in front of the cathedral packed with people and banners, the choir

and clergy leading the crowd within in a devout te deum. But when the collection was taken up, some members of the congregation began slipping out the side doors. The time had come to pay up. Cuba would begin by pledging its one per cent. The others came along. Lopez Castro had turned the tide.

Until the Russian delegation arrived, Litvinov's second in command, Andrei Gromyko, who had succeeded him as Ambassador, filled in but was not instructed on many matters of substance. Gromyko's sobriquet "Old Stone Face," belied a dry, sardonic humor when he chose to turn it on. It accurately described an impenetrable mask, which may well have contributed to his amazing and unique record of survival amid the changes and chances of life in Russia from 1909 to the present. When the delegation arrived, its head, a young man perhaps in his thirties, took over. Vasili Alexeevich Sergeev, People's Vice Commissar for Foreign Trade, was a different type. Affable, the son of a steel worker, and educated as an engineer, he was a product of the new regime. His English was excellent, his manner confident but cautious, since he was venturing for the first time outside the Soviet Union and was on his guard, undoubtedly accentuated by the presence among his delegation of members of the secret police. Relations with him became easier than with Gromyko as we felt one another out, but I rarely saw him alone and never had the sense of rapport that I felt with so many of the other men present. In fact, in years of dealing with Russian Communists I never felt this with any of them. Nor do I know any of my colleagues who did.

The principal task and partial achievement of the meeting at Adantic City was educational—to talk things out and get some realistic consensus on what the relief administration could do and should try to do, its scope and limits, its methods of financing, and its appropriate clients and methods of dealing with them. To most of those present the problems were new and the proposed solutions unfamiliar. All of us were dealing with conditions as yet unimagined, but the main task of guidance fell to the British and ourselves, who had done more exploration than the others. Looking over the long-forgotten resolutions of the council, I am impressed with their sensible approach. They were not formal recitations and were not written as laws but as explanatory papers to guide administrators, recipients, and givers of relief as to what to expect, what to do, and how to go about it. A memorandum of mine written before the conference gave the general principle: "UNRRA should do those things which will not be done without it and avoid what can be done with existing means. The problems will be so great and the demands so many that UNRRA should adopt something in the nature of an international Jeffersonian principle of doing the least which is necessary to accomplish the result—which is another way of saying that it should center its attention upon the essential problems which cannot be solved without it."

As far as the Russians were concerned, the organization existed to give prizes for fighting Hitler. From our first meeting with Litvinov until they nearly wrecked the organization in 1945 by demanding practically its entire fund, their view was that those who fought hardest were entitled to most even though in fact there were few nations better able to provide and pay for their own relief.

These conflicting points of view made for sharp arguments. Few of them were settled—in the sense of ended—at Atlantic City. They remained with us for a long time, but the issues were clarified.

One of the first problems, discussed before, during, and after Atlantic City, was the proper relation of UNRRA to the military authorities. In the course of the long debate the parties almost completely swapped positions. The reliefers, at first, were eager to tread on the armies' heels, and the soldiers, not unnaturally, chafed over the proposed intrusion of civilians. Later my friends in the War Department, John J. McCloy and General John Hilldring, would insist that the Army could not "get into the relief business," that its responsibility to a civilian population was to furnish what was necessary "to prevent disease and unrest in the wake of battle." I would point to the inescapable fact that only the Army could command the necessary shipping, supplies, and people to do the minimum and that with a constantly advancing battle its "wake" continued to be an active zone of operations.

When relief was needed in an area such as Greece, where our forces had responsibility for supply but not operations, the question arose as to who would protect the supplies and their distribution against local disorder. Hilldring's view that the local citizenry could choose between fighting and eating earned him the title of "No Forcible Feeding" Hilldring. One learned by hard experience that general principles do not resolve concrete problems and that things are rarely what they seem. At Atlantic City a foundation was laid for this process of operation by trial and success or error in North Africa.

A FORECAST OF THE DIVISION OF POLAND

Just before the council meeting ended, an incident occurred that cast a long shadow into the future. Sergeev came to me with a request to show a film of, as he described it, "the fighting on the eastern front," just received from Russia. This promised to give some idea of the devastation "in the wake of battle" with which we were planning to deal. I saw no objection and announced an evening showing for the whole conference and staff. To my chagrin, the film turned out to be a propaganda picture of triumphant Russian occupation of parts of Poland with the population embracing not only the troops but—so the dubbed-in commentary explained—the Communist doctrines they carried with them. My error in not investigating the film before arranging for its showing was underlined by the Polish Ambassador's angry protest as we left the hall. I promised to consider what could be done.

Jan Ciechanowski, an accomplished diplomat and a charming gentleman, had already taken a distrustful view of UNRRA. In July he had called on me twice in distress because of remarks the President and Governor Lehman had made to the Polish Prime Minister, General Igor Sikorski, which, as the Ambassador had understood and translated them, referred to "food as a weapon" in the sense that relief supplies would be used to influence European countries after their liberation. Mr. Huh reported this to the President, who replied in some heat that "the impression which the Polish Ambassador received is of

course utterly contrary to the fact. In my talk with General Sikorski and the Ambassador I spoke of food as a weapon in the actual war."^ In the same month the Polish Government had protested against the powers of the four-member Central Committee.^ The Ambassador now saw his fears strengthened by the ominous implication of the Russian film, apparently shown under my sponsorship.

When we discussed it, Jay Llewellin and I saw nothing to be done beyond making clear that we had been taken as much by surprise as anyone and regretted the showing. He proposed that then and there we call on Ambassador Ciechanowski, express our regret, and, taking him by the hand, proclaim our friendship. When I doubted the eflfectiveness of this procedure with someone who had just heard the future of his country imperiled, Llewellin asked whether I had a better plan. I had none, so we adopted his.

The first phase of UNRRA ended in a glow of cordiality, which gave comforting assurance that two lessons had been learned in the School of Hard Knocks. McDermott's assistant press officer, Lincoln White, who had gone with us to Atlantic City, wrote me a warm letter expressing the appreciation of the press for the arrangements made for them and the efforts to keep them fully informed. When the President asked for legislation to authorize and appropriate funds for UNRRA, the process was painless and swift. Senator Vandenberg told the Senate Committee on Foreign Relations, "I think it also ought to be said that the State Department was amazingly cooperative, almost without precedent." Representative John Vorys, Republican of Ohio, echoed the sentiment before the House committee.^°

10. THE BRETTON WOODS AGREEMENTS

Agriculture and relief were simple matters compared to international monetary arrangements. The period of gestation of the latter about doubled that of elephants. Conceived in May 1941 in the lend-lease talks with Maynard Keynes, the agreements were brought forth in July 1944. For nearly two years the treasuries of the two countries, with Maynard Keynes leading for the British and Harry Dexter White for us, exchanged drafts and ideas. From time to time State and other agencies participated in a subsidiary way, our interest being directed chiefly to commercial policy and commodity agreements. At first during this period Berle, Feis, and I each played a small part; gradually the other two dropped out.

By the spring of 1943 the White draft of an international monetary fund, with Keynesian amendments, cleared with Parliament and congressional committees, was distributed for study and further discussion in Washington. Nineteen of the governments sent experts to meet in June and make a report. An Anglo-American group in the autumn added sections on commercial policy, commodity agreements, cartels, and employment. The work of both groups emerged in the spring of 1944 as a "Joint Statement of Technical Experts on the Establishment of an International Monetary Fund." Meanwhile, the Treasury also conferred with congressional committees and then published a draft outline of a proposed International Bank for Reconstruction and Development. In May the State Department issued invitations to forty-odd governments to meet on July 1 at Bretton Woods, New Hampshire, "for the purpose of formulating proposals of a definite character for an international monetary fund and possibly a bank for reconstruction and development."^

Henry Morgenthau deserves the same high praise that has been given Mr. Hull regarding the United Nations Charter for the patience and thoroughness with which he prepared with Congress, foreign governments, and the public these intricate and most important agreements. They could not have been put through without his special quality of leadership. The field, especially of the Monetary Fund, was so technical that it necessitated picking a highly qualified lieutenant to do the technical work and backing him to the hilt. The field of monetary arrangements itself evoked very little popular and no congressional interest. Here Morgenthau's capacity for almost obsessive concentration on the matter in hand became of great importance. Harry White, so far as I could observe, served Secretary Morgenthau with complete loyalty and great skill. In later years it was charged that he had Communist sympathies. I have often been so outraged by Harry White's capacity for rudeness in discussion that the

charges made against him would have seemed mild compared to expressions I have used, but he could be equally pleasant and amusing, as I well remember from an evening when we joined the Keyneses for dinner at the Whites'. I have often differed, sometimes violently, with his policies, but they were usually policies that I knew were strongly favored by his chief. He died suddenly in 1948, and time has mellowed for me the harsher side of his nature. I say to his restless spirit with kindliness, "Requiescat in pace."

By the time invitations to the conference went out, I had been left without competitors as State's representative in the enterprise. Bretton Woods had been chosen both for the beneficent climate of the White Mountains and the availability there of a summer hotel of adequate size and condition. However, having been closed for three years, it presented problems of staffing and operation in wartime that had not been fully considered. Having at least recognized them, I did not stay in the hotel myself but in a comfortable inn at nearby Crawford Notch. The transportation problem was solved by appropriate attention to the military police assigned to guard our privacy and well-being.

Henry Morgenthau put me on the delegation despite an argument I had with him over its selection. He wished to include in it the ranking majority and minority members of the Banking and Currency committees of the two houses, t However, Senator Charles Tobey of New Hampshire, the ranking Republican on the Senate committee, was reputed to be an extreme isolationist, and Morgenthau wanted to bypass him in favor of the next Republican. To have been pointedly excluded from a conference held in his own state when he was running for re-election would have been an insult Senator Tobey could not have overlooked. The sacred rights of seniority would have ranged his colleagues on his side and an enterprise that needed all the congressional support it could get would have been launched with a bitter partisan row. This, I told Morgenthau, could prove its death warrant; I might be a novice in international monetary arrangements, but I was a professional in senatorial ones. Reluctantly, he backed away from this folly and Tobey became one of the most effective supporters in the Congress of the international bank and fund. He also became a devoted and loyal friend to me.

While we were battling the disorganization during the opening weekend at Bretton Woods, Senator Tobey came to me with a request. The Fourth of July and the need for an address at the conference were hard upon us. So was the Republican primary in New Hampshire, where he faced opposition. If he could make the Independence Day address, he would receive most gratifying publicity throughout the state. With the help of Fred Vinson it was arranged, and our relations were forever cemented.

The evening of our arrival at Bretton Woods, unknown to me, proved to be the five-hundredth anniversary of the concordat between King's College, Cambridge, and New College, Oxford. Maynard Keynes, a devoted Kingsman, had arranged a celebration into which he poured his exuberant enthusiasm. Overcoming the near anarchy in the kitchen and wine cellar, he had organized

a dinner for seven or eight representing the two colleges as well as Yale University, with which King's had a special relation, originating when a Kingsman, Charles Seymour, became President of Yale. H. H. Kung, the Chinese Finance Minister, who had recendy received an honorary degree from the university, Oscar Cox, and I represented Yale. In private Keynes disrespectfully referred to His Excellency as "the old Mandarin" and in public delighted in asking his views on the most complicated monetary problems. But "H.H.," who had married a sister of Mme. Sun Yat-sen and Mme. Chiang Kai-shek, was quite able to hold his own in any company. He did so that evening, when Keynes was at his most charming and brilliant on the subject of the contribution of universities to civilization.

For nearly four weeks the work of the conference went on all day and often far into the night. Keynes thought that the pressure was "quite unbelievable," though by our standards it did not seem unusual. After attending some night sessions, contrary to his doctor's orders, he suffered a heart attack and forswore them. An effort to keep Keynes's illness quiet proved unsuccessful and led to the usual investigations of who leaked the story to the press. It appeared that on the evening of his attack an alarmed Lady Keynes, looking for someone to fetch a doctor, found a most helpful young man who, of course, turned out to have been a newspaper correspondent.

The chief work and arguments of the conference concerned the International Monetary Fund, where the State Department's interest in maintaining the freedom of trade from legal or monetary restraints was watched over by Pete Collado and Leo Pasvolsky. Under the monetary conditions existing at the end of the war, what Mr. Hull had always opposed as impediments to trade were seen by the Treasury as discriminations against the United States and just as vigorously opposed. My own duties and interest centered in the work of Committee II on the international bank, to which under Keynes's chairmanship I had been assigned and put in charge of drafting the bank's charter. Years later George Woods, then President of the bank, expressed his gratitude for its flexibility and broad powers. As contrasted with the fund, whose charter was largely dictated by monetary experts and narrowly hedged about, the bank management could do anything it wanted to. This restrictiveness of the fund document, mistakenly attributed by Keynes to the lawyers, was what he had in mind when he said in the final plenary session of July 22: "I wish that [the lawyers] had not covered so large a part of our birth certificate with such very detailed provisions for our burial service, hymns and lessons and all."

Keynes did not like lawyers. He thought the United States "a lawyer-ridden land" and believed that "the Mayflower, when she sailed from Plymouth, must have been entirely filled with lawyers." However, he paid our little band at Bretton Woods a handsome compliment for approaching his ideal lawyer: "I want him [a lawyer] to tell me how to do what / think sensible, and, above all, to devise means by which it will be lawful for me to go on being sensible in unforeseen conditions some years hence. . . . Too often lawyers are men who

turn poetry into prose and prose into jargon. Not so our lawyers here in Bretton Woods. On the contrary, they have turned our jargon into prose and our prose into poetry. And only too often they have had to do our thinking for us."^

In our discussions of the bank in Committee II we ran into three substantive issues, which in the end were worked out by private negotiation. The first of these grew out of the competing claims for loans of war-torn and undeveloped areas. Keynes and I favored equitable consideration of both, the criteria being the need for and efficacy of the project rather than the cause of it. White disagreed. The solid weight of the Latin American delegations threw the decision our way. More difficult was the desire of all delegations, led by the Russians closely followed by the Latin Americans, for much lower subscriptions to the capital of the bank than to that of the fund. The reason, of course, was that drawings upon the fund were related to subscriptions and quotas, while borrowings from the bank would be unrelated to ownership of the capital stock. However, a general failure to subscribe would mean either no bank or one financed largely by the United States. Henry Morgenthau put a great effort into getting the Soviet Union to raise its subscription to the bank to the level of its quota in the fund. He was able to announce the achievement of this goal at the final plenary session. It was, however, a short-lived success, since the Soviet Union did not ratify either agreement.

Eddie Miller and I had more enduring success with the American republics. This involved many and long discussions with the principal delegations, followed by meetings with the whole group. One problem was to find a place spacious but private enough for so large and so confidential a meeting. My so-called office was clearly not that, as a more or less enclosed corner of the ballroom, now the plenary-session hall, had been turned over to me. It had once been a bar and still had the curtain that had been pulled across at closing time. Into this small spot of happier memories Miss Evans moved her typewriter and used the sink designed for washing glasses as a filing cabinet. She soon adopted other officeless waifs, including a spaniel, which frequently added its comments to the debates in progress on the other side of the curtain. We found other places to meet with our Latin American friends, who soon succumbed to Eddie's charm and persuasiveness in Spanish, Portuguese, and English.

The third issue was solved by changing our minds. The British had wanted the bank's lending power to be limited to the amount of its capital and surplus, while we had advocated a high ratio of loans to assets. However, our commercial-banker member, Ned Brown, pointed out to us that we would be defeating our own purposes in taking this view. The bank's bonds could not, at least initially, be sold without some guarantee by the United States Government, and our proposed original position would have required an open-ended commitment from the United States. We hastily joined the British in their position.

Toward the end of July the Bretton Woods conference ended amid mutual congratulations and we returned from our White Mountain resort to the muggy heat of a Washington August, intensified by the even more sultry stickiness of a negotiation with the Russians.

LEND-LEASE NEGOTIATIONS WITH MOSCOW

Our original lend-lease arrangement with the Soviet Union at the time of Hitler's attack in the summer of 1941 provided for one billion dollars of supplies to be repaid within ten years after the war. This optimistic agreement had long since been outdated both in the amount furnished and in the conception of settlement. The Soviet Union had suffered grievously under Hitler's attack. The Administration thought that the time had come for new discussions about the future, and the Soviet delegation to Bretton Woods had stayed over for the purpose. Fortified by representatives of the Foreign Economic Administration and the Treasury, I was designated to conduct them, and did so in the almost unbearable heat of our southwest-corner room in Old State.

The surrounding circumstances were no more propitious than the weather. Poland was in the midst of the agonizing uprising of General Bor's forces in Warsaw against the Germans, signaled by the Russians just across the Vistula, who then waited before crossing it until the Germans had destroyed the insurgents and much of the population of Warsaw. Messages flew from Roosevelt and Churchill to an unmoved Stalin. Feelings ran high. Even the heat of our room could not warm the chill between allies into cordiality. Since our discussions were quite fruitless, I shall not bother with them.'' Moscow knew that in the last bitter struggle with a desperate Hitler we could not and would not interrupt the flow of supplies to the Russian divisions that kept so many Germans busy in the east while we had all we could handle in the west. The President decided to adjourn the discussions.

For me the importance of these negotiations was the lesson they taught me under Averell Harriman's coaching. We began with generous proposals submitted before the discussions started; broadly speaking, they provided for writing off materials consumed or destroyed during the war, returning ships and similar surviving loans, and paying on easy terms for goods they wanted to keep. For days the meetings went on with exactly the same points, often in the same words, made by each side. Attempts to vary proposals, to feel out the other side for signs of flexibility, brought only the same stolid and verbose replies from the Russians. Then I remembered the sound advice Averell Harri-man had given me sometime earlier, when he was home from Moscow: not to ignore a fundamental fact of Communist negotiating procedure—that no Soviet representative would ever report home what an opponent said. To do so would give the impression that he had been impressed or was weak or lacked zeal in carrying out his instructions. Furthermore, unfriendly NKVD men on the delegation could use any willingness to compromise against him. He could report only what he said, how well, and with what telling effect.

The way to make progress toward some conclusion—even one that no agreement was possible—was to recess the meetings for a day or two, signaling an important consultation, and then to present a paper with some modification of position toward the ultimate acceptable one. This should be followed by

another recess to give the Soviet delegation an opportunity to communicate with Moscow. The paper would be communicated, since not to do so would be a grave fault. On getting a reply the Soviet negotiator would ask for a resumption of discussion. Each such exchange must be played for a while to indicate the serious consideration being given to it. One could soon decide whether movement was only circular or toward an agreement. We soon determined that in our case it was purely circular.

Ending negotiations if they were getting nowhere was as difficult as conducting them. It was like playing Old Maid: no one wanted to be left with the queen of spades, the onus of having broken them off. The exit from them was an indefinite adjournment.

Direct dealings by a Western embassy with the Soviet Foreign Office have been described by Sir William Hayter, formerly the British Ambassador in Moscow and later Warden of New College, Oxford, as like dealing with an old-fashioned penny slot machine: one rarely got out of it what one wanted, but one got something. One could "sometimes expedite the process by shaking the machine," but it was "useless to talk to it."'*

For us in State, however, this frustrating Russian interlude was soon forgotten amid the greater events then impending.

11. A CHANGE OF SECRETARIES AND OF JOBS

On SEPTEMBER 30, 1944, Mf, Hull, a very ill man, confided to his friend, Assistant Secretary Breckinridge Long, that within a day he would see the President and tell him "that while he would not resign before election that he would leave immediately after that." "It was a sombre conversation," Long notes in his diary. "He was tired of intrigue . . . tired of being by-passed . . . tired of being relied upon in public and ignored in private . . . tired of fighting battles which were not appreciated . . . tired of making speeches and holding press interviews—tired of talking and tired of service. . . . The end of a long career is at hand—ending not in satisfaction, as it should, but in bitterness."^ Long was sworn to secrecy, but his diary was not. To read Mr. Hull's own account of his feelings at the time^ in the light of Long's is a warning to memoir writers.

About the middle of October, being summoned to Under Secretary Stet-tinius' office, I found Long and Joseph C. Grew, then acting as Special Assistant to the Secretary, already there. They told me something of the nature of Mr. Hull's illness and that he was to move from his apartment where he had been for a week or two to Bethesda Naval Hospital, and showed me a proposed press statement. This not only stated that the Secretary was going into the hospital, but it would have raised serious doubt that he would ever come out. It seemed a dubious contribution to the political campaign. They agreed to substitute an innocuous announcement of a proposed rest and medical checkup.

Mr. Hull's resignation was announced on November 27. At once I wrote him and within a day had a note from him, courteous, reserved, and formal:

Dear Mr. Acheson: November ^o, ig^^

I wish to express my warmest thanks for the kind and generous message contained in your letter of November twenty-eighth. I deeply appreciate what you say. At the same time I want you to know that I am grateful for the very splendid cooperation and assistance you invariably gave me as one of my principal associates in the Department. I shall always remain greatly indebted to you.

With every good wish to you and your family for a full measure of success and happiness in the future, and with kindest personal regards. Sincerely yours,

Cordell Hull

Curiously, it was only after Mr. Hull's retirement that a real friendship developed between us, which continued until his death. The copy of his memoirs he sent me was inscribed "with warmest friendship," a considerable de-

parture from his formal style. Throughout the years when illness confined him alternately to the hospital or his apartment I visited him as regularly as duties permitted. We had long gossips, usually about the past. Sometimes he reviewed grievances, as he had with Long—and they still rankled; sometimes he took obvious pleasure in arguing that few of his positive acts had been mistakes. It is equally possible, though I did not point it out, to make mistakes by inaction. On other visits, but less often, he would want to know what was going on, the news behind the news. Other callers reported that he enjoyed these visits. He touched me deeply in December 1950 when I was about to go to Europe while under heavy attack in Congress. Word came to me that Mr. Hull had come to wish me good luck and bon voyage, but could not leave his car, which was in the Department's basement garage. I went down to see him and found quite a reception going on as word had spread of the old gentleman's presence. He told me that there were times when friends might be useful and that he wanted to be publicly counted among mine. In the Tennessee mountains, where feuds were serious, friendships were also.

Hard on the heels of Mr. Hull's resignation came the nomination of the Under Secretary, Edward R. Stettinius, Jr., to succeed him. This led to speculation in the press that the President would be—or, perhaps, would continue to be—as they expressed it, "his own Secretary of State," a most misleading phrase. The President cannot be Secretary of State; it is inherently impossible in the nature of both positions. What he can do, and often has done with unhappy results, is to prevent anyone else from being Secretary of State. The office can be filled; some person can perform its ceremonial duties—and, perhaps, a little more; but the function of a foreign office and of its head is simply not performed by anyone.

President Roosevelt's virtual exclusion of Secretary Hull from high-policy decisions during the war had more far-reaching effects than its contribution to the estrangement of the two men. It led directly to the theoretical and unreal nature of the State Department's—and, hence, the Government's—thinking on postwar problems. Largely detached from the practicalities of current problems and power relationships, the Department under Mr. Hull became absorbed in platonic planning of a Utopia, in a sort of mechanistic idealism. Perhaps, given the nature of the current problems, of the two men, and of the tendency to accept dichotomy between foreign and military policy, this would have occurred in any event. But it accentuated the isolation of the Secretary and the Department in a land of dreams.

BRAVE NEW WORLD

Before arriving in Washington at the age of thirty-eight, Stettinius had gone far with comparatively modest equipment. Enthusiastic, good-natured, and with prematurely white hair, an engaging smile, and a gift for public relations, he had been Vice President of General Motors and Chairman of the Board of United States Steel. Two types of businessmen come to Washington. One is the product of a stafif, is lost without it, and usually finds Washington a

graveyard; the other is his own staff and relies on his own ability and drive. Stettinius was unique in that he belonged to the first group but did not find Washington a graveyard, even though he became Secretary of State. He was confirmed immediately and with only Senator Langer of North Dakota dissenting.

Shortly afterward Joe Grew came to me. A serious interview clearly lay ahead, for Joe had the solemn and portentous look of an eminent physician about to impart grim news. The Secretary, he said (how quickly attendants adopt the new titles of their master!)—the Secretary was about to make extensive changes to further departmental efficiency. My three colleagues were leaving—Long and Shaw for private life, Berle to become Ambassador to Brazil. The "'moving finger," having written, moved on, leaving my own position obscure. Grew himself was to be Under Secretary, and Will Clayton was to be Assistant Secretary for Economic Affairs, the position which I was still occupying. Julius Holmes would be in charge of administration and Archibald MacLeish of public and cultural affairs, a new post not altogether clearly defined. Supervision of the geographic divisions was to be divided between two assistant secretaries: Nelson A. Rockefeller, formerly Coordinator of Inter-American Affairs, would supervise our relations with the American republics, and James C. Dunn, formerly Director of the Office of European Affairs, those with all other states.

There was one post left. Clearly the choice, if I was to have one, could only be between this, whatever it might be, and resignation. The Secretary, Grew continued, was pleased to offer me the field of "congressional relations and international conferences."

The offer carried with it the distinct impression that it was expected to be declined, but my mind did not need the speed and competence of a computer to veto that conclusion. Surely better opportunities to leave the Department could be managed than during a general housecleaning. Furthermore, relations between the Congress and the Department were bound to be active as the end of the war approached. The management of such matters as the Bretton Woods agreements, the United Nations Charter already being negotiated by Stettinius, another renewal of the Trade Agreements Act, a treaty with Mexico on the uses of international waters, and all the inevitable agreements, treaties, and legislation growing out of the war could provide a strong position from which to influence policy. The Department had always listened to an oracle who prophesied what Congress would or would not tolerate, particularly if the oracle could do anything to effectuate his prophecies. What the reference to international conferences added was not clear. Probably it was intended as garnishment to a position that might otherwise seem meager. At most it might refer to the arrangements with local authorities and others necessary to house, protect, and operate a conference, which were handled by the Division of International Conferences. With solemnity and fervor equal to his own, I told Grew that my desire was to serve where duty called and accepted the offer, to preclude its reconsideration.

Our first view of the Stettinius style came with the hearings before the

Senate committee on the confirmation of what he called "the team which the President and I have chosen to assist me in directing the Department of State."^ He and his acolytes—referred to by the press as Snow White and the seven dwarfs—appeared before the committee en masse. Stettinius had suggested to me that I appear with them and offer myself for examination, a proposal I flatly rejected. Already holding office and being under no obligation to assume the sacrificial role of an appointee to a new one, I did not propose to begin my task of dealing with Congress with so naive a performance as volunteering for the abattoir.

The proceedings opened with a sketch by Stettinius of his reorganized department and of the several qualifications of the team, including myself, for our new posts. Then he called upon each to make a statement. Joe Grew began with a declaration of faith, including "I believe in Mr. Stettinius. ... He is 'the man who gets things done.' ""* The committee was well disposed and inclined to recommend confirmation and call it a day. But the eager, amateurish innocence of the whole performance evoked senatorial humor, and senatorial humor contains a sadistic element. A little fun was necessary to lighten all this solemnity. With Jimmie Dunn it took the form of getting this able, delightful, and basically shy man thoroughly rattled; with Archie MacLeish, to ask him as the future propounder of the mysteries of foreign policy to expound some selected lines of his own verse. Archie wisely chose safety over valor and retreated behind Browning's defense that when the lines were written he and God botli understood them, but that at the moment the latter alone could recall what they meant.

When the Senate had given its advice and consent, an oath-taking ceremony was arranged in the large conference room at Old State adjoining the Secretary's office. It resembled a mass baptism. Stettinius, snow-capped and episcopal, flanked by the protocol oflicer holding a Bible, received the line of initiates. Grouped near them were their wives, garbed in fur and identified by one or more orchids. The room was filled with spectators and photographers; flashbulbs popped. Each candidate in turn laid left hand on the Bible and, raising his right, swore to defend the Constitution of the United States without mental reservation or purpose of evasion. Each then kissed his wife, showing undoubtedly that his latest promise had not diminished an earlier one.

The company moved across the hall to the diplomatic reception room from which the beautiful and delicate Madison desk had been removed to make more room for moving-picture cameras. There Stettinius introduced each recruit, who stepped before a microphone and briefly elaborated upon his oath of allegiance. As the last turned back, a thought obviously struck the Secretary. "And now," he said, "last, but by no means least, we have a member of the team who took his oath of office four years ago. Assistant Secretary Dean Acheson." I can only describe what followed in biblical terms. As I was pushed before the microphone, an evil spirit entered into me. I heard what seemed to be my voice say: These little pigs went to market But this litde pig stayed home. Stettinius was not amused.

The festivities, however, were not over. All the Department had been invited to Constitution Hall to view the new team in the flesh. Walking over there, a friend in the Foreign Service observed to me that he had not seen such organized spontaneous fervor since Ed Stettinius had been head cheerleader at the University of Virginia, adding that he hoped the performance of Ed's team would be better than that of the university's in those earlier days. Supported by a few other officers, the novitiates sat in a crescent on the stage. The scarlet-coated Marine Band played. Again the Secretary introduced the team, and on their behalf Joe Grew pledged loyalty to the chief. We rose for the national anthem and returned to our desks, rededicated men and women. The brave new leadership in the Department was already in sight of its end.

ORGANIZING FOR MY NEW JOB

My change of jobs carried with it a change of habitat. The old southwest-corner rooms were to know us no longer, and were swept out to make space for the new Secretary's expanded staff. Whoever chose its stenographic component had a good eye and a partiality for redheads. Our new quarters looked out on the west entrance to the White House and its elm-shaded lawn. They promised, at least, to be cooler in the summer, though we were not to stay through a whole one. The first task was to think about what the job should be and how to organize to do it. Precedent posed no problems. Breck Long, who handled congressional matters out of his hat and on a purely personal basis, had an assistant, unique and invaluable, whom I pre-empted at once. Felton Johnston of Mississippi (known as Skeeter for reasons never explained to me) had come to Washington to work his way through college by means of a job in the capital obtained for him by Senator Pat Harrison of his own state.

Most of my own colleagues of the past four years were scattered. Adrian Fisher and Edwin McElwain were navigating bombers over Germany. Donald Hiss and Eugene Rostow (later Dean of the Yale Law School and Under Secretary of State for Political Affairs) had gone off to a stint in Algeria and then to the hospital. Recuperation from a collapsed lung took Donald into private practice, and a successful spinal operation led Gene to a noncombat commission in the Army. But Eddie Miller was within call and some new talent was available. But, first, the conception.

What the Department needed was the advice, the practical guidance, and the operational help of a first-class law firm organized within the old gray building. The office of the Legal Adviser had never done anything of this sort. In the days I am writing of, it dealt largely with claims by or against the United States on account of its own or its citizens' wrongs, suffered or inflicted, treaty drafting, and the legal dialectics of an international imbroglio. None of its ordnance was later than the eighteenth century, except possibly some Civil War cannon used to support the blockade of southern ports. The Legal Adviser's office in 1944 dealt largely with ancient law, not with the new products that the Department would soon be ordering from the temperamental management of the law factory on Capitol Hill. Though new, they would nonetheless be laws. In true

Rooseveltian style, we would create a new agency to draw their specifications and see them through to production.

Our new agency would have somewhat more than the duties and functions of "house counsel" to a large business corporation. To begin with, we must establish intimate contact with the powers that regulated us and know their minds before they had been collectively made up. At that time the Committee on Foreign Relations held a commanding position in the Senate, with reservations when an issue involved either tariffs or appropriations. Its prestige resulted not so much from tradition as from the individual weight carried by its members, though the two factors interacted. The committee's jurisdiction and powers attracted men of substance and authority, while the membership of such men enhanced the prestige of the committee. In the House, and especially when tariffs and appropriations were involved, the Committee on Foreign Affairs was less prestigious. Here tradition from the days when foreign affairs dealt largely with treaty making (which excluded the House) had played a part. The prize committees began with Ways and Means and Appropriations. In the House, therefore, to influence the membership on matters of foreign policy, it was indispensable to have the help of the Speaker and the Majority Leader in support of the Committee on Foreign Affairs.

After establishing contact with our principal committees, the next step would be to make clear to all members of Congress that for action from the Department they must look to our group. If we were to be held responsible for guiding legislation, we must develop the political equivalent of patronage. No one looked to the Department of State in the appointment of postmasters, marshals, collectors of customs or internal revenue, or in drawing up contracts for ships, planes, or camps. What small assets we had must be husbanded and made much of. At the cost of considerable internal friction we established the practice that, no matter how an inquiry or request from Congress came into the Department, our office should answer it. Frank Merkling, a genius at this, would get off an acknowledgment the day a congressional inquiry was received and then follow it with a series of progress reports to the inquirer until the final answer could be given or action reported. To the member of Congress the Department seemed like a pack of beagles in frenzied pursuit of the information or action he wanted, and he knew who whipped in the hounds. The service was not great but it nourished a sense of obligation or, at least, a friendly attitude.