Return of the Native

For the first time since the early days of the Republic, a Cabinet member reported in person to Congress. Cordell Hull, appearing in the House before the two great bodies, facing kleig lights, the Diplomatic Corps, Cabinet members and packed galleries, stood at the zenith of his career. But the 72-year-old Tennessee mountaineer, cool and reserved as ever, made no play for the greatest gallery of his life. In his own way, cautious but sure, steady and tenacious, he hammered away again at the cardinal tenets of his diplomatic philosophy. Thus he made no stirring show, and not much news except in the yard-long, colorless "color" stories in the press. But he did say that:

The Big Three (or Four, with China) are not going to rule alone. All sympathetic nations will have a voice. (Thus he partially answered Wendell Willkie's recent plea for immediate participation by all the United Nations in the declarations of the Big Four.)

But the speech was mainly distinguished for one challenging declaration, yet to be proved: "There will no longer be need for spheres of influence, for alliances, for balance of power."

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