The Wilmington morning star. [volume] (Wilmington, N.C.) 1909-1990, 1945-07-03
Button dot pocket, dummkopf!"
TODAY and TOMORROW
By Mauldin
BY WALTER LIPPMANN

LIPPMANN
policy a wide practical knowledge
of many departments of the gov
eminent is invaluable, indeed in
dispensable.
If we can come to regard the
reshuffle as normal it will mark
a great advance. 1t will do away
with the poisonous idea that to
argue that circumstances call for
a new Secretary of State is to as
sassinate the worthy and admir-
able individual who happens to be
Secretary of State. To make it
easy to change men around would
be an excellent thing for the men
themselves and for the public serv-
ice. Many man, indeed almost
any man, who has done well in
one office, will sooner or later be-
come stale, a creature of his own
routine, and the prisoner of his
own habits. The very best way to
rest him and rejuvenate him is
to give him a new job, one where
he must apply the experience he
has gained in government to new
problems, with new men around
him, and where he will see the
interests of the country from a
different point of view.
This, moreover, is the best way
! to attract into and then keep in
public life men of high ability. If
public service is to become a ca
reer for such men, they should not
be held in one groove till they per-
ish of boredom. or be kept palpi-
tating about whether they are 60
ing to be fired or promoted. At
the higher levels of government,
! varied experience, rather than
excessive specialization in one de-
parment, is the surest preventive
of bureaucracy and the best pos
sible preparation for making high
policy.
The principle of the reshuffle is
peculiarly appropriate to the re-
organiza ton of the State Depart
ment and the foreign service. We
ask ourselves where are we going
to find the mer to carry on our
foreign relations now that our in
terests are so complicated, so gen.
| eral, and so important throughout
the world. 1t is natural to suppose
that they can be found only in a
specialized service recruited from
+ men initiated into the mysteries of
diplomacy. But on the whole this
is an error, survival from the
day when relations among states
were the relations of kings, and
embassies were missions from one
court to another.
In the world today, foreign rela-
tons are in fact the relations
among governm ents each COM
posed of complex departments.
What more natural then than that
embassies abroad and also the
State Department at home should
be recruited in large part from
men who have served in one or
more departments of our own gov
eminent, and who may be expect
ed to return to them.
To say this is not to deny the
need for men who have given
much attention, though not their
whole attention. to specializing in
foreign regions and international
subjects. There have to be men
in the departments and in each
embassy who are versed in the
art of dealing with foreign nations.
They are needed to preside over,
to regulate and manage, the inter-
national contact of officials.
But to have a knowledge of di-
plomacy in this sense will rarely
include a knowledge of the prob
lens with which diplomacy deals
the problems of governing, of
economic life, of social and Gull
tural development. The capacity to
understand these problems will be
better developed among men who,
as officials of the Treasury, Com
Agriculture, Labor, Inter-
ior, have dealt with analogous
problems here.
The President and his new Sec
rotary of State will, I believe, have
the greatest result if they proceed
on the principle that one VINO
has served faithfully should be dis
from public life, but that
many should be shifted from one
post to another; that IN looking !