The Waterbury Democrat., 1939-05-20


 Despite the importance of the State Department, no government agency in all of Washington is more underpaid, understaffed and wore equipped to handle the vast responsibility placed upon its shoulders.
 This is true even at a time when the State Department is asking for tremendously increased powers under a new neutrality act, pow CTS which may permit it to place the United States on one side or the other in case of war.
 Many senators, generally sym- pathetic with the idea of loosen- ing the now rigid neutrality law, hesitate to give that discretion to the State Department as it is now organized. They believe that be- fore MT. Hull's career boys get more power, they should first show that they deserve it.
 SNOBBISH ISOLATION
 Basic trouble with the State De- partment goes back to two things: (1) lack of money; (2) isolation from the USA-Some people call it SnobbiShneSs.
 The constant vail of the career men themselves is against the iso- lationist tactics of Hiram Johnson, William E. Borah and other west ern senators. They claim that the the United States no longer can remain cut off from the world, in the isolation of its earlier days.
 In this, MT. Hull's boys may be right. But they in turn, commit the same sin. They live in virtual isolation from their fellow men.
 The career diplomat who has soiled his hands with manual la bor, or rubbed shoulders with the great mass of the American peo- pie, is as fare as an anti-Hitler Nazi.
 Equally rare is the U. s. dip- lOmat who knows the Middle West. Some of them were born there, but left after the diaper age and have been too busy touring foreign capitals to return and tap sentiment in that great cradle of American isolation the Mississippi Valley.
 Moreover, all the high officials of the State Department, except for MT. Hull himself. were born, bred and reared on the Atalantic Seaboard.
 EASTERN MONOPOLY
 Calling the role of the State Departments top-notch executives. Sumner Welles, undersecretary of state, is from New York and Mary land; Assistant Secretary Adolf Berle, is from New York, Fran cis Sayre from Pennsylvania and Boston, George MesSersmith from Delaware; Walton Moore, coun- selor of the Department, is from Virginia; Jimmy Dunn political adviser is from Newark, N. J.; and Stanley Hornbeck, another poli- tical adviser, is from Massachu- sets.
 Of the men who really deter mine American foreign policy, not one comes from west of the AL legheny mountains. and it is even rare when one of them go as far west as Pittsburgh or Chicago to deliver speech on U. s. foreign policy.
 LEARN FROM THE PRESS
 The State Department might take a lesson from one of the natoin's largest press associations, which employs Midwestern news papermen because most of its clients are in the West. It does this on the theory that a Mid- western newspaperman living in the East understands what his home town newspapers want to print.
 Likewise, the State Department might pick or train its men so that they will understand senti- ment in that part of the country which exercises such Q veto pow. CT on American foreign policy.
 Whether the State Depart- ment likes the Midwest or not, it has to do business with the people there; So it might send It's career boys west of the Mis- sissippf every year t0 rub shoul- ders and get re-Americanized. PENNY-PINCHTNG
 Second major cause of State Department inefficiency ig lack of money. Why this should be so,