A great anomaly of 1939 was that in a year of unprecedented preparedness, Franklin Roosevelt chose to get along first with an ailing, aging Secretary of the Navy, and then with none at all after old Claude Swanson died last July. Assistant Secretary Charles Edison eased along as Acting Secretary, waited hopefully for the full title. The President let him wait, meantime let Washington gossips go to the lengths of rumoring that Republican Frank Knox would get the call in the interests of National Unity.
In the interests of something much more prosaic, Franklin Roosevelt last week gave the nod to...
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