> In factual terms the news was brief. Under Secretary of State Sumner Welles had resigned.
> In political terms the news was complex. When would Franklin Roosevelt cease his appeasement of Southern Democrats, who had forced Welles's resignation, and how would U.S. foreign policy be affected?
> In human terms the news was repetitious. Cordell Hull had again got his man.
> [In journalistic terms] the news had been foreseen (TIME, Aug. 23). But rumors of dissension had been consistently denied by Cordell Hull, who accused newsmen of seeing smoke where there was no fire.
Factual. To Latin American diplomats in Washington, two days before the first report of his resignation got into print, came a rigidly proper letter from austerely correct Sumner Welles. Its import: Since Franklin Roosevelt had accepted his resignation, he hoped, most sincerely, that the ties of friendship would remain unchanged.
Next day Sumner Welles slipped out of Washington, turned up at Maine's swank Bar Harbor, where he held to diplomatically correct silence. If Sumner Welles was going into limbo, he would meet it with the good form a son of Groton and Harvard is expected to show.
Political. No such considerations restrained the U.S. press. Its endorsement of Sumner Welles was surprisingly widespread, its condemnation of Franklin Roosevelt and Cordell Hull surprisingly severe.
> Said the New York Herald Tribune: "A fairly brutal sacrifice of American foreign policy to Roosevelt fourth-term politics. Secretary-Hull has the ear of Congress. . . . Mr. Welles has apparently had most of the ideas and the firmest grasp of any one in the State Department over the actual problems of the future."
> Said the Philadelphia Inquirer: "A disquieting indication of weakness on this country's diplomatic front. . . . His departure from the State Department conceivably will be received with misgivings in the Latin American countries and Moscow.".
> Said the Washington Post: "To be sure, Mr. Welles was one of the 'hosanna boys' or 'star-gazers,' as Mr. Hull stigmatizes the expositors of the Four Freedoms. . . . But in terms of ultimate loyalties, surely no sin of disloyalty could be chalked up against Mr. Welles on that account.
With much more justice Mr. Welles could return such a charge to his State Department chief." To the hubbub caused by Welles's resignation was added a hubbub of speculation over his possible successor. The candidate reportedly favored by Cordell Hull—onetime Ambassador-to-Italy Breckinridge Long — was certain to meet bitter opposition from those who think democratic aspirations are important. For Breckin ridge Long, whose swank parties were attended by the fanciest members of Ital ian society, has won no distinction by his opposition to Fascism. Other candidates for Sumner Welles's vacated job are Career-Diplomat George S. Messersmith, onetime Minister to Austria, now U.S.
Ambassador to Mexico; Boston Brahmin Joseph C. Grew, former Ambassador to Japan; popular, top-flight Norman Armour, Ambassador to Argentina, now in Washington.
But whoever gets the job, Cordell Hull will give the orders. The forced resignation of Sumner Welles made one thing unmistakably clear: in the archaic rook ery that houses the U.S. State Department Cordell Hull is boss.