Supercabinet

Franklin Roosevelt last week followed Winston Churchill's example and set up an inner War Cabinet. At its head he put the man who is his titular assistant, but whose only job traditionally is to preside over the Senate and wait around in case the President dies: Vice President Henry Agard Vallace.

Though it has an innocuous title, the Economic Defense Board is in reality a potent supercabinet. Composed exclusively of the eight Cabinet officers who are directly concerned with foreign affairs, Henry Wallace's Board will help the President conduct the only kind of warfare in which the U.S. thus far is engaged: economic war against the Axis.

The Board will set policies for the control of trade abroad, handle transactions in foreign exchange, administer the frozen assets of European countries. It will coordinate the work of all other Government agencies dealing with economic defense, including the three departments whose Cabinet heads are not represented on it (Post Office, Labor, Interior), the Maritime Commission, Federal Trade Commission, OPM, OPACS, etc. The Board will integrate the work of these agencies with the policies of Britain's Ministry of Economic Warfare. It will also keep an eye on U.S. preparations for peace and post-war reconstruction.

Other members: Secretary of State Cordell Hull (see col. 2), Henry Morgenthau (Treasury), Henry L. Stimson (War), Frank Knox (Navy), Claude Wickard (Agriculture), Jesse H. Jones (Commerce) and the Attorney General of the United States (when that vacancy is filled). Henry Wallace will appoint an executive director to assist him, was expected to name 44-year-old Winfield William Riefler, New Deal economist, a professor at Princeton University since 1935.

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