The Comer

Officials at the Defense Department, who come and go, usually enter into their duties with no more ceremony than attends a taxicab wedding in Las Vegas, Nev.--a routine swearing-in, generally in Louis Johnson's Pentagon office dining room, congratulations from several dozen officeholders, kisses from relatives, and bored coverage by a handful of newsmen. But things were different last week when Chief Justice Fred Vinson administered the oath of office to lanky Frank Pace Jr., 37, new Secretary of the Army.

Pace's rise had been swift. A graduate of Princeton and Harvard Law School, he practiced law, joined the Air Forces in 1942, ended the war as a major in the Air Transport Command, then entered Government service as an attorney and got a job as assistant to the late Postmaster General, Robert Hannegan. Harry Truman spotted him. He was put in the Bureau of the Budget, and was made its director after only one year. As Washington could see, Pace was a comer.

To his swearing-in trooped some 500 Government officials including Dean Acheson, John Snyder, Jesse Donaldson, Maurice Tobin, Oscar Chapman (the other Cabinet officials were out of town) and Supreme Court Justice Hugo Black. There were also so many Army officers and so many others friends & relatives that Louis Johnson had to hold the affair in his big conference room. Did Mr. Pace promise to discharge his duties? rumbled Mr. Vinson. Said capable Frank Pace, in a loud, clear voice: "I do, so help me, God!" And in a short speech he added: "This occasion is only possible because of the man in the White House, President Truman, for whom I have the greatest possible affection . . . I will give unstintingly of whatever competence I have."

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