FOREIGN RELATIONS: Diplomat's Diplomat

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The Roosevelt Administration is trying to fight a War of Brains.

The theory is that if the War of Brains is waged skillfully, the U.S. entry into a shooting war can be postponed until the U.S. is ready, willing & able to fight a shooting war. If the U.S. could win the War of Brains, it might not have to enter a shooting war at all.

On the theory of the War of Brains the Administration has built the whole structure of its present policy: the Lend-Lease administration, all-out production for all friendly democracies at war, the program of economic and financial controls designed to throttle the Axis nations, the program of domestic price and priorities controls to maintain strength at home.

The War of Brains is an ancient American institution, streamlined to the nines by Adolf Hitler. So ingeniously did he wage this war that he won every one of the first battles of diplomacy, from the audacious occupation of the Rhineland down through Munich. The first time Hitler lost a diplomatic battle, he had to go to war. The U.S. brain war has been fought from an almost exactly reverse position. The U.S. has lost every diplomatic battle so far, except for Latin America.

In the U.S. the War of Brains is primarily the business of the State Department. And the task of U.S. diplomacy is to exhaust every possible means of avoiding a shooting war.

One big reason the U.S. is fighting a War of Brains is that this is the only kind of war it is at present equipped to fight. Of all defense-vital commodities, brain power is the only one fully in production.

In the War of Brains, as in any other war, the toughest wins. Today more career men have high posts in the State Department than at any other time in U.S. history. Franklin Roosevelt was the first President in many years to appoint a career man as an Ambassador (William Phillips to Rome). Another of his appointees, Sumner Welles, is one of the very few career men ever to become Under Secretary of State, and as matters now stand may eventually become Secretary.

Unknown Gentleman. This week Cordell Hull returned to Washington to resume his duties. He had been absent, in ill health, six weeks. But his return should not change matters greatly. Grave, saintly Mr. Hull, never an expert at paper-shuffling, has long left the actual administration of the Department to his chief aide, Sumner Welles. And Cordell Hull may choose not to retire. But even if Welles never becomes Secretary, he will still hold his present power: through Presidential choice, his own ability, background and natural stamina, he is the chief administrative officer of U.S. foreign policy. In the War of Brains, he is a field marshal.

Stories of a jealous division between Messrs. Hull & Welles are untrue, based only on the many honest disputations natural between two strongwilled, hard-headed men of ideas. Actually, the two team up superbly under the President. In policy arguments Hull presents a view shaped by years of devotion to a single ideal, freedom of trade, plus a sharp eye for political weather. Welles presents a view based on diplomatic technique, on a cultural approach, and on the relation of the problem to the Hemisphere.

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