Roll of Honor

Both of the Washingtons were still growing last week—the Capital of politics, of lobbyists, bureaucracy, waste, inefficiency, greed, red tape, delay, confusion; and the other Washington, the center of a Government that is the world’s biggest business, where decisions somehow get made and work somehow gets done.

War has sharpened the cleavage between the two capitals. The city and its confusion are endlessly multiplied: to faraway citizens, Washington looks and sounds like a madhouse. But the solid core has grown too: Washington now has more keen managerial talent than any other city in the world.

Some of the best men in Washington are naturally the men in the biggest jobs, the headline names. There are also scores —and perhaps hundreds—of capable 60-hour-a-week executives who never get their names in the papers. At the top rank of these good executives and just below the big headliners are the little headliners. They are a few dozen men of key importance who have already qualified for Washington’s World War II roll of honor. Here are ten of them, chosen not necessarily as the best ten but as typical of efficient patriots:

James V. Forrestal, 50, went to Washington after making a pile of money in Wall Street, where he was president of the investment banking firm of Dillon, Read & Co. He still wears his banker’s semi-stiff collars, smokes a pipe, has an amiably smashed nose from boxing. A man of healthy cynicism, Forrestal sometimes says: “I doubt very seriously that I’m doing any good down here. I don’t know whether businessmen should go into the government or not.” But as Under Secretary of the Navy, Jim Forrestal reorganized the archaic Navy purchasing system, is now responsible for all of its huge procurement program. By making his job one of Washington’s best-managed, he has earned the town’s respect.

Robert Porter Patterson, 51, a blunt, monkish onetime Federal Appeals Court judge, was doing K.P. duty in the Army reserve camp at Plattsburg the day he was appointed Assistant Secretary of War. In Washington he got an equally messy job: channeling the Army’s swollen, muddied procurement program. He went to work in shirt sleeves, vest dangling, jaws chomping gum, his right arm working like a pump handle as he announced decisions. Soon he was promoted to Under Secretary. Judicial Bob Patterson’s plodding, plugging methods have led him down many a blind alley. But they have also knocked over blank walls. He won permission for field ordnance officers to award orders up to $500.000 without approval from Washington, finally got the figure to $5,000,000, now has cut by two-thirds the time it took the Army to sign contracts. He was pounding his desk over Army waste of strategic materials long before most men in Washington even knew this was a problem.

John Jay McCloy, 47, is a Manhattan lawyer who, as Assistant Secretary of War, is both right-&-left-hand man to Henry L. Stimson. As an old World War I artilleryman, he commands the respect of combat generals, often gives them a useful new idea, such as using puddlejumper planes for observation work (see p. 72). Affable and efficient, he hurries conversations along with a pleasant “yep, yep,” puffs away at thick cigars, flicks the ashes deftly into a wastebasket four feet away, occasionally extracts a bell-shaped chocolate drop from a pile on the desk. His duties have included everything from handling administrative details of the Army training program to moving Japanese off the West Coast. Everyone who knows himp gives him top marks.

Robert Abercrombie Lovett, 46, won the Navy Cross as a flyer in World War I before he got his diploma at Yale. Son of a noted lawyer and railroader, he married the boss’s daughter first, then—after proving his ability with other firms—became a partner in the old banking house of Brown Bros. Harriman & Co. Called to Washington in 1940 as special assistant to Secretary Stimson, then made Assistant Secretary of War for Air, he found what he now fondly calls “a hell of a mess.” To Bob Lovett, more than any other one man, goes credit for unifying the Air Corps, giving it a chance to design and buy its own equipment for its transformation from Army stepchild to Army mainstay (TIME, Feb. 9). He launched the big bomber program, mapped the worldwide network of Army airways under the Air Transport Command.

Oscar Sidney Cox, 36, a tall, tweedy, drawling Yankee lawyer from Portland, Me., has a formal job in the Justice Department (where he is now helping prosecute the eight Nazi saboteurs) and an even bigger sideline as general counsel on Lend-Lease. He drafted the original Lend-Lease bill, has since helped administer it. He scrapes up supplies, gets them shipped as often as he can. A government career man since 1938, Oscar Cox has had many bosses in the Capital: they all call him “the smartest damn lawyer in Washington.”

Philip Francis Maguire, 37, is a genial, rock-jawed Irishman who went to Washington as lawyer for the old NRA, later helped Milo Perkins get his famed food-stamp plan started. Now he is an anonymous assistant to WPBoss Donald Nelson, serving as buffer and jack-of-all-trades, working ably and realistically on a dozen jobs at once. A bear for detail, he has taken all the load of minutiae off Nelson’s overburdened shoulders.

Joseph L Weiner, 40, is WPB’s deputy director of civilian supply. Trying to wangle materials to keep the civilian economy alive, he stands right on the bull’s-eye in the fight between military and civilian (TiME, Aug. 3). Swarthy, cocky Joe Weiner, to whom all Washington officials, generals and admirals look alike, would have been fired long ago for speaking out of turn—but he has been too valuable to get rid of.

William Lockhart Clayton, 62, was famed in his own right as the biggest U.S. cotton merchant. Now, working in fellow Texan Jesse Jones’s RFC, he is seldom heard of, never quoted, almost never seen outside his office. But through his big, able hands pass all the multi-zeroed dealings of Defense Supplies Corp., which trades vital loans for Latin American raw materials, and other jobs.

Julius Albert Krug, 34, is a hulking onetime football player from the University of Wisconsin. He started in the telephone business, was called to Washington as a utilities expert in 1935, got so disgusted with red tape that he pulled out. Washington friends persuaded him back; he became boss of WPB’s power section. He took the job when it was a cyclone center: Harold Ickes was fighting for control of public power; the big new aluminum plants needed more power fast; copper for new wiring was short and the Army & Navy were screaming for all that was in sight. “Cap” Krug came through the test with colors flying: he did not completely avert power shortages, but he kept the huge new aluminum plants and all other war industries turning. Now he runs WPB’s famed “Purp” (raw-materials allocation) plan.

C. Edward Rhetts, 32, is a lanky Indiana youngster who went to Washington from Harvard law school, is now executive assistant to WPB’s Bill Batt. Ed Rhetts has never yet made the headlines—but if Russian soldiers knew his name, they would give him prayerful thanks every day. His job is to get WPB’s Lend-Lease aid on to Russia-bound ships; Russians who come to the U.S. to get non-military help such as locomotives and machine tools knock first on Harry Hopkins’ door, then wind up talking to Rhetts. He wangles the goods off U.S. production lines, fights the Army to get clearance, gets the goods to the docks. In a city noted for men afraid to run with the ball unless they have a legal release from the White House, Ed Rhetts has been a notable and youthful exception.

There were many other names on Washington’s wartime roll of honor. Many of them were career men, to whom war came as the logical great opportunity of public service. Others were business and professional men whom war had yanked up by the roots, transplanted to strange new soil. Each in his own way has worked long and diligently to bring victory closer.