More, More, More

Wheezing genteelly, the venerable U.S. State Department pulled up its spats and jumped into a rough-&-tumble 1943 world. More powerful (on paper) than ever before, more bumbling than usual in actual performance, the State Department stretched out a gloved hand for still more prerogatives.

More Power. For months the Department has squirmed with the pangs of outraged protocol because several war time agencies are working in State's own private preserves: any area outside the U.S. (TIME, Aug. 9). Last week it took steps to soothe the pains.

Calvin B. Baldwin, who was released as chief of Farm Security Administration last week, was promptly appointed (by the State Department) as boss of all U.S. relief and other economic activities in a yet-to-be-liberated Italy. Every U.S. Government civilian employe stationed in Italy will file his reports, in future, with the State Department, via Area Director Baldwin. The appointment was an obvious pattern for all future U.S. administration abroad. State had served notice that it was going beyond "policy directives": it was taking over all executive reins as well.

If the chiefs of several affected Govern ment agencies were surprised to find themselves working at last for State's foxy old Bureaucrat Cordell Hull, most of them took it gracefully. Edward R. Stettinius Jr. (Lend-Lease), Leo T. Crowley (Office of Economic Warfare) and Nelson Rocke feller (Coordinator of Inter-American Af fairs) bore up smiling, kept mum. Only Herbert H. Lehman (Office of Foreign Relief & Rehabilitation) was reported seized with a mild fit of sulks at his sudden demotion.

More of the Same. Few men in Washington have the courage to resign, even though many of them could do more good by resigning than by staying. But some are beginning to have this courage. One of them last week was James D. LeCron (an official of Rockefeller's OCIAA), who quit his job as negotiator of food agreements with Latin American countries.

Said he: in the stifling swirl of red tape which State manages to twine around any agency that does business abroad, the Department had been guilty of "interference, obstruction, delay and unintelligent dictation. ... I am unwilling any longer to beat my head against the wall of incompetence and indifference." The blast from OCIAA's thwarted LeCron was only one more voice in a swelling chorus of complaint at State Department inefficiency. Normally temperate Columnist Raymond Clapper had finally seen enough of that "rather sorry, moth-eaten crew hovering around Secretary Hull." Foreign correspondent William L. (Berlin Diary') Shirer made an acid reference to the "frightened, timid little men who make our foreign policies."

Widely quoted was an article by Joseph M. Jones, ex-State Department Far East expert, in the September FORTUNE. Sample: "The [State] Department is one of the most inefficient organizations in the world. It is not run. It just jerks along. ... It is able, without moving, simply through inaction and lack of vision, to lay the dead hand on the prospect of change and to insure that after this war, we merely get more of the same. And this is precisely what is happening. . . ."

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