THE CABINET: New Deal: World Phase

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Most Secretaries of State would have been awed by the size and complexity of the world problems before the Roosevelt Administration—but not Democrat Cordell Hull. His job is thoroughly to the liking of this long lean Tennessean with mournfully drooping shoulders and a slight lisp. It dovetails perfectly with what he has been preaching for more than 20 years. At hand now is the chance of a lifetime to put his economic gospel to the fierce test of world opinion—and action.

A Jeremiah in a Republican wilderness, Secretary Hull long predicted ruin and woe from G.O. Policies on tariff and foreign affairs. Again & again he harped: "The practice of the half-insane policy of economic isolation during the past ten years by America and the world is the largest single underlying cause of the world panic. The mad pursuit of economic nationalism has proved disastrous. . . ."

At last year's Chicago convention Cordell Hull wrote his own Washington orders—the party platform planks on tariff and foreign affairs. The President remains the final executor of these orders and his Secretary of State, a lawyer by trade and training, functions as an obedient attorney of the Stimson type. But planted deep within the silent Hull ego is an attachment to the principles at stake that is older and deeper than President Roosevelt's, and a tenacity which may outlast that of the White House should the latter weaken.

Cordell Hull is a plain man who likes to shed his vest, prop his feet up on his desk. His level brown eyes are more emphatic than his thin, slightly pouting lips. Occasionally he breaks his long, cautiously qualified sentences with salty profanity. A cerebral personality, he takes no exercise, gets his relaxation in solitary study.

Secretary Hughes was the isolation statesman. Secretary Kellogg stood for academic peace. Secretary Stimson was the moral force man. Secretary Hull has a chance to go dowrn in U. S. diplomatic history as the world economist.

*Ambassador May's daughter Francoise will be the Queen of the Winchester (Va.) apple b'ossom festival next month. *Herbert O. Yardley, onetime Government code expert, declared in his American Black Chamber that the U. S. had stolen secret Japanese messages at the Washington Arms Conference. The official secrets bill was aimed at a second volume of "exposures" by him. *France last month issued $58,800,000 worth of new 10-franc and 20-franc silver pieces, first minted since the War.

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