Evening star., 1943-09-05
State Department Faces Crisis
Due to Many Conflicting Trends
By Marquis ". ChHds.

| have carried gossip to an extraordinary
degree. One of these is William c. Bull
| litt, former Ambassador to Moscow and
Paris. Bullitts personal ambition and
his passion for intrigue contributed more,
it is possible, to the removal of Summer
Welles than anything else He is said
to have wanted the job for himself But
even after it must have been evident
that he could not have it, he continued
his bitter opposition to Welles.
Secretary Hull himself seems to have
had no very strong animus toward
Welles. Hull made speeches, he worked
on matters of policy that particularly in
terested him, while Welles- dealt with
day-to-day problems of diplomacy. Welles
frequently saw Roosevelt, if only because
the Undersecretary has the ability to
reduce complicated situations to concise,
understandable terms. This power is
quite beyond Secretary Hull Relations
in the department might have continued
on this basis if 1t had not been for those
who constantly worked on Hull to create
bad feeling.
Hull Is Cautious.
Here, Of course, the personality of Hull
is major factor. His innate caution
has been enhanced by the red tape pro-
cedures of the Department of State. A
directive covering even the simplest
matter requires the initials of all as
sistant secretaries. Conferences to de-
eide elementary details go on endlessly.
ho r,fJ 4. ~s,,
of offending Congress and others in the
department have deferred to him since
he spent nearly 80 years of his life as q
member of House and Senate.
A year ago Hull delivered a Nation
wide broadcast on American foreign
policy Roosevelt called attention to it
in advance. It was built up as an i'm
portant pronouncement. Unveiled, the
speech was mass Of cautious generali-
cations expressed through lengthy cir
cumlocutions. AS an example of the
way Hull and the department work. one
person saw % different versions OF that
speech when 1t was in preparation. All
the wheels of the department stopped
while the Secretary conferred with his
assistants on content and phraseology
Increasingly sensitive to criticism, Hull
feels it necessary to defend every act
OF the past 10 years. The department
some months ago issued white paper
called Peace and War" that was an at
tempt to show that the department was
constantly aware of the entire interna-
tional situation. If action In some In
stances was not forthcoming, the fault
lay with public opinion, peace and War"
suggests.
Hulls most faithful friend among the
upper officers is Assistant Secretary OF
State Breckinridge Long, former st.
Louisan. Long is faithful Democrat
with point of view very much like that
OF Hull cautious, conservative, suspi-
cious OF change. Ambassador to Rome
from 1888 to 1886, Long was called back
to the department, in which he had
served under Woodrow Wilson, at the
outbreak of the war by welles.
rs Berle Outside Pattern.
Assistant Secretary Adolf A. Berle, f.,
Is completely outside this pattern or,
for that matter, any other pattern. At
48. his complicated mind is stuffed with
history and knowledge of the ways of
the world. He frequently quotes Machi-
avelli and thinks of himself as supreme
realist capable of dealing with the
foibles of ordinary human beings. His
personality and his background are
utterly alien to anything that Hull has
ever known. Yet the two get on well
enough together and, contrary to printed
reports, the probability is he will stay on.
Assistant Secretary Dean Acheson is,
like Berle, product Of the Harvard Law
School. But the two men are utterly
dissimilar and antipathetic. Their dis
like for each other goes back to jeal-
ousies and resentments too remote to
trace here, Acheson was named Under
secretary of Treasury in 1888 by Roose-
velt, but resigned in few months as
result of differences over fiscal policy.
An ardent interventionist, he cam
paigned for Roosevelt in 40 and was
made Assistant Secretary after the elec-