The Atlantic Report on the World Today: Washington

ON THE WORLD TODAY

PRESIDENTIAL intervention is the Nemesis of Washington. The Capital is just recovering from an example which threw into consternation the men charged with planning controls for post-war Germany. The job is in the hands of an interdepartmental committee headed by Assistant Secretary of State Acheson. But all of a sudden Secretary of the Treasury Morgenthau came out with a plan for Germany. Mr. Roosevelt took him to Quebec, and did not take Secretary Hull or Secretary Stimson.

The Morgenthau plan called for turning Germany into a nation of small farmers. When the news of it broke, there was an outcry, with public comment supporting Secretaries Hull and Stimson in their opposition to the proposal. Now the plan has been pigeonholed, and the agencies concerned with the German problem are again attending to their task, exhorted by the President to make haste.

The interdepartmental committee operates under the guidance of the State Department. But the economic studies for the control of Germany are undertaken by the Foreign Economic Administration. FEA, which is headed by Leo T. Crowley, is the omnibus agency which absorbed Lend-Lease, the Office of Economic Warfare, and several other agencies. It has been described as “the only Federal agency that isn’t being run.”

Complaints about its laggardness come also from observers abroad, notably in Italy. On the basis of its record so far, one cannot imagine that its study of the German problem will be done either with dispatch or with attention to realities.

American Commissioner to Germany

Before V-E Day — the day of victory in Europe — the President, if it is still within his power, will be called upon to make the most significant appointment in our representation abroad. The appointment will be that of the Civil Commissioner in the zone which the Quebec conferees earmarked for American control in Germany. The President once explained the manpower criterion as “the right man in the right place at the right time.” Doubtless he is now giving thought to this crucial appointment.

But fear that the right man will not be named arises out of recent diplomatic appointments. Most of the appointments were personal or political in nature, with appropriateness a lesser consideration. That of Robert Murphy elicited most grumbling. Mr. Murphy was political adviser in North Africa — where events following the invasion proved him largely mistaken — and he is now serving in the same relation to General Eisenhower in Germany. His appointment was attacked on many grounds. He has been defended as merely a technician who carries out policy laid down by the State Department.

The State Department, however, is often vague as to policy, and the man on the spot is compelled to be a policy-maker, even though he may be charged only with administrative duties. In dynamic situations an administrator in the nature of things has to be a policy-maker. The scrutiny that is attending appointments to posts abroad may be an insurance that the appointment to Germany will be carefully made.

The drones in a bureaucracy

Senator Byrd has earned a high reputation as the gadfly of our bloated wartime bureaucracy. He is now challenging the data of the Civil Service Commission that on July 31 there were 2,938,602 in the Federal establishment. He insists that the correct figure is 3,113,802. Both figures are fabulous enough. The Virginian could use either one without damage to his contention that demobilization should be undertaken now.

But all that President Roosevelt will authorize is a survey. The survey will show that Washington has a high percentage of drones and sitters among the workers, and they can be found in the military as well as the civilian agencies.

But it isn’t easy to sift them out. For instance, when the Rubber Director, Colonel Bradley Dewey, resigned, saying that the work of his agency was over, people imagined that the agency would be closed down. The assumption was quite incorrect, for the routine job of overseeing the synthetic-rubber program is being maintained. Another type of difficulty is presented by the case of the Office of Civilian Defense. With the end of any prospect of air raids, one might think that this agency had lost all reason for being. That is what the administrators themselves think, but an office is still operating to gather in the equipment from regional offices. And there is a staff to dispose of it.

The major difficulty of pruning the Federal establishment lies with Senator Byrd’s own colleagues. These are zealous to protect appointees and to maintain agencies. Under the Starnes-Scrugham Act, they are trying to weed the establishment, but their purpose is only to find places for veterans, since veterans now have preference in Federal jobs. Congress by this act appears to have struck a blow at competence and efficiency in the Federal establishment, despite the fact that we shall have need for both in years to come.

Congress can be niggardly as well as profligate toward the executive agencies. One example is its refusal to include in the new Reconversion Law transportation aid for stranded war workers and unemployment compensation for Federal employees. It was the House that said no. The Senate sought to bring in these groups. Even a Senate amendment, sponsored by Senator Taft, which would have limited the maximum total travel allowance to $100, restricted it to hardship cases, and allowed it only to those who received $50 a week or less, was not acceptable to the House.

As the President protested when he signed the measure, it neglects the human side of reconversion. The result in Washington, for example, will be that the women who staff the wartime offices may need help in getting re-established when the war is over. That is what happened after the last war, when numbers of them were left sitting disconsolately on park benches with only their dismissal notices in their purses.

Congress should have equalized its treatment. After all, the “government girls” have performed a valiant war service, with little pay and less glamour. If some provision had been made for them in the Reconversion Law, they would now be working better. As it is, every rumor of the end of the war upsets the working force in the war agencies.

Dumbarton Oaks lays a foundation

A feeling that the foundation of the world security organization has been well and truly laid is left in the wake of the Dumbarton Oaks Conference. One snag remains. That is the problem raised by the Russians, who contend that a major power which is involved in a dispute should retain its position on the proposed Council when the dispute is heard. The process would be like having a defendant in a law court sit with the jury. The question has been remitted to the top political level for resolution.

In a way the discussion is academic, for if a major power commits an act jeopardizing the general peace and security, war will come, anyway. Formally, of course, such a power could veto sanctions by its vote. But if the menace was real enough, the dissentient vote certainly would not prevent action by the other major powers.

The explanation of the Russians’ stand is that they wish to use their influence in the Council in behalf of their position whenever a dispute involving a border state is raised. This is what disturbs the small powers about the Russian attitude. But the Russians also want the codification of world law so that there will be a smaller twilight zone of offenses against the general security. If offenses were thoroughly itemized, and if recourse to a world court were made compulsory, then the position of the small powers would be made more comfortable in a world which will be policed by the big powers. Nobody objects to policemen so long as they are carrying out the law.

Traveling salesman extraordinary

Donald Nelson is enthusiastic about his new assignment as a roving economic ambassador. He sees as this country’s immediate post-war need the accumulation of orders for capital industries which will be deprived of the war stimulus. When he was in Russia, he got several billion dollars’ worth of orders, and he looked over the ground in China.

The credit risk in China is, of course, perilous, and Mr. Nelson told Chiang Kai-shek that there could not be any business credits without radical improvements in the Chinese economy. These are promised, though most students feel that the economic problem depends upon a political house-cleaning, the need for which was stressed by the Hurley-Nelson mission.

Mr. Nelson, of course, should be fitted into the execution of some international economic policy. But if there is an international economic policy, nobody knows it, and the agencies concerned with foreign trade are in a maze of cross-purposes as to ultimate intentions. Mr. Nelson may pick up some orders as traveling salesman for Uncle Sam, but nobody yet knows to whom he will report, or what rules constitute his terms of reference.