Appeasement

Deliberately or not, President Roosevelt left Cordell Hull out of his calculations when he fixed up the Board of Economic Warfare with a new set of brass buttons and final authority in international economic matters (TIME, April 27). Some newspapers concluded that BEW now had superseded the State Department in international affairs.

Last week Judge Hull, tightlipped, recently back from vacation, dropped in at the White House. The next day Mr. Roosevelt had a hasty amendment to make. It had all been a misunderstanding. Somebody had erred.

No one had erred. Mr. Roosevelt had said very clearly that the BEW henceforth was to "determine the policies [and] plans . . . with respect to the procurement and production [of materials abroad]." The order had given a boost to Vice President Wallace, Milo Perkins, and their BEW; had thrown State into a dignified dither. The upstart BEW seemed to have been authorized to rush into State's well-kept gardens, trample State's delicate diplomatic plants abroad.

The order, Mr. Roosevelt said last week, would be "clarified." All negotiations would be carried on through State. Judge Hull was still boss of all U.S. foreign relations, including trade. BEW would simply handle the financial and technical ends of procurement.

Mr. Roosevelt's amendments might have appeased Mr. Hull, but they were no clarification. No one knew exactly where one's authority left off and the other's began. Mr. Roosevelt had, however, accomplished one thing: prodded the slowpoke State Department into acting with more git-up-&-git. On this basis Messrs. Wallace, Perkins and their BEW still had no cause to grieve.

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.