The Atlantic Report on the World Today: Washington

ON THE WORLD TODAY

IT WAS only three weeks before the 1918 armistice that the War Department began thinking about demobilization and post-war military policy. The result was chaos. This time there will be no such chaos if Congress acts promptly on General Marshall’s recommendation. The Chief of Staff has asked for enactment of a law authorizing permanent military training for the nation’s youth.

Reconversion

The Marshall plan awaits Congressional sanction but industrial reconversion does not. The War Production Board has declared that war production will be slashed as much as 40 per cent when Germany is defeated, and as many as four million workers will be released. The announcement overshadows the reconversion program, which went into effect on August 15.

“Spot authorization” to reconvert can be given now on the approval of local manpower officials and after processing by the WPB. With the war in Europe nearing the end, however, probably the spot authorization program will be superseded by the general slash now foreshadowed. Controls over scarce war materials will be retained, for Japan will still have to be beaten after Germany, and there is reconstruction to think of.

Industrial reconversion has become an executive problem. If there had to be a change, the appointment of Julius A. Krug as Acting Chairman of the much battered War Production Board is a good one. He came in by way of compromising the differences between Charles E. Wilson, Executive Vice Chairman, and Donald Nelson, Chairman.

The differences had to do with the timing of conversion. Mr. Nelson, to whom the specter of post-war unemployment is always present, wanted to speed up conversion. Mr. Wilson was more cautious. When Mr. Roosevelt backed and filled, Mr. Wilson resigned his job out of chagrin over the President’s handling of the dispute.

The result was that Mr. Wilson did not get the public vote of thanks to which he was entitled. He made sense out of the Navy’s chaotic escort vessel program. He stimulated the aircraft industry to perform miracles. In latter months, to be sure, he has softpedaled on reconversion. And he seems to have been the voice of the military in the screening of data on the production shortages. Nevertheless he has done a great job for his country.

Will Mr. Nelson come back to his WPB desk? Mr. Krug already is acting as if he had the directive position. He is an old-timer at the WPB, who before he went into the Navy did well in behalf of the power program and in allocating scarce materials for America’s war industry. He takes up his new duties at a time when the facts demand an expediting of reconversion.

Nelson to Wilson to Krug

Mr. Krug is a capable executive. Mr. Nelson has a passion for delegating authority until he suddenly wakes up to the fact that it has gone. Then he is likely to create a crisis by trying to recapture authority. If he had carried out the executive order under which the WPB was created, procurement, price control, and rationing would have been concentrated in the WPB. One by one he shed his powers over these matters.

In China, Mr. Nelson is expected to serve as a roving economic ambassador-at-large. He has already had experience as a traveling salesman for Uncle Sam.

When he got back from Russia, there were orders in his brief case for several billion dollars’ worth of capital goods. The hope is that he will be equally successful in China — though, of course, long-term credits will have to be extended. It may be that Mr. Nelson, who thinks of this business as the only preventive of a post-war depression, may go on similar missions elsewhere.

Closed doors at Dumbarton Oaks

Political “reconversion” has been the burden of the Dumbarton Oaks conversations. You might call it an exploration on the ambassadorial level. That is to say, the experts will sift ideas, and then the governments will take them up. It is doubtful that a treaty will come before the Senate till after the elections.

There has been less discussion over the matter than over the manner of the meeting. The delegates met behind closed doors — with the press, at American insistence, barred even from contact with the delegates. There has been a tremendous fuss but, unlike the protests over similar arrangements at last year’s food parley at Hot Springs, it has not caused the American officials to relax their attitude. That the situation is bad is indicated by the leaks. The New York Times scoop of the American plan incensed the State Department.

It is sometimes easier to say what is not a good information policy than to explain what is. Bretton Woods was obviously handled properly. Weeks in advance of that conference the American plan was furnished to the press. It was then freely discussed. And when the conferees met, Secretary Morgenthau gave the newspapermen all reasonable facilities for reporting. The State Department would have been better advised to follow the same procedure in connection with the Dumbarton Oaks conference and hand out the American plan in confidence.

Surely, when the issue is the endowment of the Executive with authority to use force on the command of a “world authority, a little education of the public is needed. The sloppy handling of publicity at Dumbarton Oaks is almost an insurance that the treaty will not have an easy time in the Senate.

Leaks in the Press

The leak of the American plan is actually thought by some American officials to have emanated from the British delegation. That theory is entertained on the grounds that the fortunate correspondent has friends among the British, and also that one leak may deserve another, from the British standpoint.

A pretty kettle of fish is involved in the latter feeling. Drew Pearson somehow got hold of a report from William Phillips to the President, excoriating British policy in India. The British were furious. Seldom has there been more excitement in British circles. On Mr. Eden’s instructions, the State Department was curtly asked to investigate the leak. No report on it was returned, though the feeling in Washington is that the columnist got his tip from the Indians, who in turn had been given a copy by somebody in the State Department.

There is still a good deal of convulsion in Whitehall. What must British officialdom have thought when the State Department in turn requested an investigation of the British delegation to Dumbarton Oaks for the person who released the American plan? American suspicion of the British delegates strikes all correspondents who have tried to get information out of the British as funny. You do not need to go further for an illustration of the boomerang that always comes out of the effort to sit on public information. It has now got to the pass that the deliberations at Dumbarton Oaks are of less interest than the expostulations against the general secrecy.

On the basis of previous conferences, one can hazard a guess as to the modus operandi of the delegates. The British are acting as one man. There is a discipline among them which makes the chairman the indisputable spokesman. The British case is argued by every British delegate without any divergence from set British policy. The American case is hammered out in front of the foreign delegates. One might imagine that there had been no prior consultation among the Americans.

The foreigners present, if they have had no previous experience, are bewildered. The Russians are even more disciplined than the British. Not a word of extemporaneous exposition can be got out of the Russian delegates, nor any spontaneous rebuttal of objections raised by others. The Russians, unlike the British, do not argue. They read their case, listen to objections, note them carefully, and come back next day with a written counterplan. The Russian leader behind the Dumbarton Oaks scenes is understood to be the former ambassador to Washington, Constantine Oumansky, now ambassador to Mexico. From him the Russians get their instructions.

It may be taken for granted that no international police force will come out of the present security conference. The reason is simple. In a world of sovereign states there is a political objection to preventing aggression by anything more than the use of pooled force under the separate flags of constituent member nations.

Russia of course is the exponent of a world air force. China is a strong supporter of it. Britain is opposed — mainly, however, because of the American objection, which is based on the fear of complicating the treaty when it is submitted for Senatorial ratification. It is already obvious from Senate discussion that permitting any outside organization to vote American soldiers into foreign areas will encounter hard sledding.

How popular is the PAC?

Indications that Sidney Hillman’s Political Action Committee has overplayed its hand are beginning to multiply. The revolt started in New England. The speech given in August in Massachusetts by Robert J. Watt has had a wide circulation. Mr. Watt, who is an A. F. of L. chieftain, declared that organized labor had “ no right to operate as a political organization unless we are going to accept the responsibilities and limitations of a political organization.”

Resignations of PAC officials have been reported from Providence and Woonsocket. One hears that the revolt is coming from the rank and file of the workers, who feel that they should be free to vote as they please, and who object to having union funds used for other purposes than those for which they are collected.

In his testimony before the House Campaign Committee, Mr. Hillman evaded the real issue. That issue is whether the prestige and financial resources of labor unions formed for the purpose of assisting collective bargaining shall be used to further the political objectives of labor leaders. Mr. Hillman sought to stifle criticism of the PAC as an illegal instrument by declaring that the PAC is now relying upon voluntary contributions. That exempts the PAC from the penalties of the Corrupt Practices Act.

But this is more than a legal problem. The fact is that in a democracy, in which suffrage rights are privileges enjoyed by the individual, it is an intolerable invasion of such privileges to have labor leaders set themselves up as political spokesmen for a politically heterogeneous following. The Republicans may be expected to make the most of what has come to be called “the Hillman issue.”

As the election approaches, there is growing uncertainty about the registration. More than 12 million industrial workers have migrated to new homes since November, 1940. Nearly as many men and women are in military service. How many of these people will qualify to vote? It is doubtful that more than a fraction will, for not many of them can have gone to the trouble of re-establishing residence. These nonvoters are mainly in the Roosevelt column.

They make all the difference in some states—for instance, New York, which has lost more than a million inhabitants in the past four years. This gives the Republicans hope. So do the dissatisfaction evident among Negro leaders in key Northern states and the divided feeling among Catholics toward Mr. Roosevelt’s foreign policy.