(5 of 6)
The Rise in Washington. By 1939, Ed Stettinius was chairman of a Roosevelt group known as the War Resources Board. This agency was kept in the background because of the inflammatory word "War" in its title; it finally died after four months. Then the safe word "Defense" was thought of, and Stettinius became National Defense Advisory Commissioner, a month before the fall of France. After eight ineffectual months, NDAC was abolished and OPM set up, with Ed Stettinius as director of priorities. There Stet made one good mark: he urged the U.S. to develop synthetic rubber. But he brushed aside talk of an aluminum shortage (later the U.S. spent $500,000,000 building up aluminum capacity); and he sponsored and stood by Gano Dunn's overoptimistic survey of steel facilities (later steel capacity was increased 17%). He gave his priorities job such slow handling that his successor, Donald Nelson, imported Sears Roebuck mail clerks to expedite a mass of 18,500 requests which had not even been answered. At this point, Friend Hopkins arranged to have Stettinius tucked in as Lend-Lease Administrator. Stettinius glowed to friends: "I got the plum!"
In Lend-Lease, he did better, working as the direct aide to shrewd Harry Hopkins. Most notable ability Stettinius showed was his old knack of getting good men to work under him. With Hopkins as backstop, he helped bring into Government William L. Batt, Harvard's William Yandell Elliott, General Electric's Philip Reed, Dartmouth's Dr. Ernest Martin Hopkins, and the man who gave Stettinius his first job—John Lee Pratt, who retired from General Motors in 1935 and is still Stet's No. 1 adviser.
And Stettinius had always been a good salesman, which was a prime requirement for Lend-Lease. In personal appearances before Congressional committees, Stettinius won Democrats and Republicans alike. Able assistants had prepared his briefs, but he argued the case well. And when Cordell Hull forced Franklin Roosevelt to choose between him and Sumner Welles, Harry Hopkins was ready with a new Under Secretary of State. Stettinius again "got the plum."
Wait and See. The months in which Stettinius has served as Under Secretary have been tense and troublesome. For the failures, he has not been entirely to blame. The gradual near-deadlock of the Chicago Air Conference could not be laid to him. (Stettinius has rigorously excluded himself from all air parleys, since his brother-in- law is Pan American Airways' world-pioneering President Juan Trippe.) He guided Dumbarton Oaks—with plenty of direction from above. This he did with such Rotarian exuberance (addressing the key Russian and British members by their first names, smiting them on the back, taking them to see the Rockettes and Billy Rose's Diamond Horseshoe in Manhattan) that more reserved diplomats did not know whether they should wince or feel embarrassed for him. The vital question still unsolved by Dumbarton Oaks—whether a nation on trial as an aggressor should be allowed to sit in judgment, and veto, a decision unfavorable to itself—can only be answered at a level above him, by Messrs. Stalin, Roosevelt & Churchill. At the purely technical level, Dumbarton Oaks' achievement was considerable.