CABINET: Help Wanted (Male)

About a month ago, Sumner Welles wrote a few South American friends that he had resigned as Under Secretary of State, took a train for swank Bar Harbor. But Welles’s resignation has not yet been announced: no successor has been named.

Replacing Welles is as difficult an appointment as Franklin Roosevelt has ever had to make. To be successful, the new Under Secretary should be:

1) A skillful administrator. Power-jealous Cordell Hull has been bringing more & more under State Department control the many agencies that deal with foreign countries. Last week even Foreign Food Administrator Herbert Lehman, who has been mumbling resignation, gave in.

2) A master of bureaucratic politics. When able Norman Armour, Ambassador to Argentina, was mentioned for Under Secretary, State Department officials shook their heads, said he would never make the grade. The reason: Armour is ”too friendly with everyone.”

3) An able policy maker. Presumably Cordell Hull never again wants an Under Secretary such as Welles, But the State Department is under heavy fire from U.S. citizens who believe that the management of U.S. affairs is bumbling, foolishly snooty toward liberal elements, unnecessarily solicitous of Fascists, insufficiently cooperative with the Russians and the Chinese. The sacking of Welles made him the darling of Hull’s “liberal” enemies—a good deal more of a darling than perhaps he ought to be on his past record. To replace Welles with an Under Secretary whose main virtue is that he is a Hull man would almost certainly release another critical barrage, and again seriously diminish U.S. confidence in the State Department.

Most frequently mentioned for the job thus far have been Breckinridge Long and Dean Acheson. now Assistant Secretaries of State; Ambassador to Mexico George S. Messersmith; James C. Dunn, political relations adviser to Hull; and Wayne Coy, Assistant Director of the Budget. None of these would solve Franklin Roosevelt’s dilemma. Under the present organization of the Department, no one could be a really successful Under Secretary.