Understudy

For the second time in nine months, the State Department got a house cleaning. Secretary Stettinius had brought a whole new team with him last December. Now Secretary Byrnes began to fire & hire.

For a starter, out went three top members of the Stettinius team: mild, grey Under Secretary Joseph Clark Grew and Assistant Secretaries Archibald MacLeish and Julius C. Holmes. No tears were shed by those who thought Joe Grew lacked the drive and imagination for his job. Most Washingtonians agreed that MacLeish was not happily placed as the department's publicist, and few knew precisely what Julius Holmes had done (he was supposed to streamline the creaky department).

The new Under Secretary, and Jimmy Byrnes's key man, was Dean Gooderham Acheson, 52, who had resigned as an Assistant Secretary just three days before. He had quit because he found it hard to live the life of a diplomat on $9,000 a year, was persuaded to come back to higher responsibilities--at just $1,000 a year more.

Up from Groton. Secretary Acheson can be expected to add new life to Jimmy Byrnes's department. The son of an Episcopal Bishop of Connecticut, he went to Groton and Yale (1915), was an ensign in World War I, took his law degree at Harvard. An honor graduate, he was snapped up by the late, great Supreme Court Justice Louis D. Brandeis as secretary, soon went on to a potent Washington law firm (Covington, Burling & Rublee).

With the New Deal he went into politics as Under Secretary of the Treasury, quit in disgust six months later when the rubber-dollar advocates got Franklin Roosevelt's ear. But Lawyer Acheson, back in private practice, was still a New Dealer, did much behind-the-scenes work on foreign policy (notably the 50-destroyer deal). He came back into Government as Assistant Secretary of State in 1941.

Over to Congress. There he specialized in economic matters, did much of the spadework on Lend-Lease, and headed the U.S. delegation to the conference which set up UNRRA. Later, he took over as the department's Congressional liaison man. Congressmen liked him: his technique was facts and argument, not fixing.

A tall, tweedy, reserved man with a magnificently well-kept mustache, Dean Acheson looks like the average man's idea of the typical diplomat, elegant without being stuffy. His handsome, brunette wife is an artist. They have a remodeled redbrick house in Georgetown and a 100-acre weekend farm in Sandy Spring, Md.

One of Under Secretary Acheson's closest friends is Ben Cohen, now counsel for the State Department. This, and the fact that he served his apprenticeship under Justice Brandeis, recommended him to the true New Dealers left in the Administration. They think that he is at best a little left of center. Conservatives were impressed by his lack of harum-scarum economics. He seemed a logical choice for Middle-of-the-Roaders Harry Truman and Jimmy Byrnes.

If Jimmy Byrnes does all the world-traveling he now plans, Dean Acheson will be Acting Secretary of State a good part of the time.

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