The New Secretary

My Dear Mr. President:

I regret that it is necessary for me to submit my resignation as Secretary of State . . . I shall never forget your kindness, and I submit this resignation "with affectionate regard and great respect.

In the Oval Room of the White House last week, President Truman read to his press conference these soldierly words from George Catlett Marshall. The President was grave as he went on reading his own written reply. Suddenly Truman grew impatient with the inadequacy of his own words. He looked up to reporters and blurted: "In my opinion, General Marshall is the outstanding man of the World War."

Nothing Soft. The President had a lot of news to tell, and he told it swiftly. He had hoped Marshall could stay on, but Marshall, recovering from a kidney operation, was in no shape to continue. Under Secretary Robert Abercrombie Lovett, who had ably carried a heavy load, would leave when Marshall did, on Jan. 20, Inauguration Day.

The new Secretary of State would be Dean Acheson, said the President, and James E. Webb--now Director of the Budget--would be Under Secretary. The new Director of the Budget would be the present Assistant Director, Frank Pace Jr.

A reporter wanted to know whether Marshall's resignation gave any support to an article in LIFE last week by Columnist Jay Franklin, who had written campaign speeches for Truman. Franklin (speaking for himself and specifically not for LIFE) had asserted that the President was preparing to swing away from the For-restal-Marshall-Lovett-Vandenberg policy to a softer policy toward the Russians. That article, said Truman sharply, is absolutely without foundation, in fact, in nearly every instance and every paragraph.

That seemed to put Jay Franklin in his place and Harry Truman squarely on the old course. But it didn't answer all the questions. What kind of man was the new Secretary of State, and what kind of course would he sail?

Liberal Education. Dean Gooderham Acheson, now 55, is a tall, tweedy mixture of dignity and good humor, and by no means as stuffy as his pukka sahib mustache makes him look. His British-born father, Edward Campion Acheson, was Episcopal Bishop of Connecticut, his mother was a daughter of the wealthy Gooderham whiskey distilling family in Canada. Young Dean went to Groton, on to Yale for his A.B., then to Harvard for his law degree. He got into government as a protege of Harvard's Felix Frankfurter and a secretary to Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis.

Franklin Roosevelt made him Under Secretary of the Treasury in 1933, only to fire him six months later for objecting to Roosevelt's dollar devaluation policy. To friends, Roosevelt dusted Acheson off as a "lightweight." The lightweight promptly built up a small fortune as a corporation lawyer in Washington. He bought a fine home in swank Georgetown for his pretty artist wife and a 120-acre farm in Maryland. He picked up fat fees from utility companies fighting the New Deal. Though he was not a Government official when war in Europe came along, he helped put over the 50-destroyer deal with Britain. In 1941, all was forgiven and Roosevelt made him Assistant Secretary of State.

At first, Acheson was concerned mostly with economic affairs and liaison with Congress, where he was well liked. Later, he got deeper into policy. During the war and immediately after it, Acheson favored "sympathetic understanding" of the Russians. It was a policy opposed by another Assistant Secretary, Adolf A. Berle Jr., but Acheson at the time was right in step with top State Department bigwigs, with Jimmy Byrnes, Harry Truman and a great many other Americans. One of Acheson's advisers was the Director of the Office of Special Political Affairs, Alger Hiss (brother Donald once was Acheson's executive assistant in the State Department*). When Whittaker Chambers went to Berle and linked Alger Hiss with a Washington Communist group, Berle took the report to Acheson. Before the House Un-American Activities Committee last summer, Berle testified:

"Acheson said that he had known the family and these two boys from childhood and he could vouch for them absolutely."

"A Gross Slander." Most Washington correspondents believed that Dean Acheson had been sincerely converted to a get-tough policy toward Russia. It was he who helped inspire, draft and put over the Greek-Turkish aid program. Before a Senate committee, Acheson charged: "Russian foreign policy is an aggressive and expanding one." Molotov protested that it was "gross slander ... inadmissible behavior . . . hostile," and was slapped down by George Marshall.

A month before George Marshall proposed the Marshall Plan at Harvard in June 1947, Acheson first outlined the basic doctrine in a speech at Cleveland, Miss. Before returning to private law practice in July, Acheson charged that Moscow was blocking "the whole course of recovery and the international pursuit of happiness'." He was denounced in Pravda for "a gross and rude slander."

Congressional leaders expected that Acheson would get Senate approval after a lot of talk but not too much trouble (the Senate had confirmed him as Under Secretary by a vote of 69 to 1). Said ranking Republican Committee Member Arthur H. Vandenberg: he is a man of "wide experience in foreign affairs ... I expect the committee will fully explore his viewpoints . . ."

The new Under Secretary of State, James Edwin Webb, at 42 is a swiftly rising star in the Administration. A broad-shouldered and affable North Carolinian, Webb is a lawyer and a former vice president of the Sperry Corp. A pilot, he was a wartime Stateside major in Marine aviation. A protege of North Carolina's late O. Max Gardner, Webb became Truman's Director of the Budget in July 1946. There he made many friends, no enemies. When a reporter asked the President what Webb's qualifications were for Under Secretary of State, Harry Truman replied: He is a good man and a good administrator and that is what we need in the position.

*And is now one of 40 junior partners in Acheson's law firm, Covington, Burling, Rublee, Acheson & Shorb.

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