(5 of 5)
Up at 6 a.m., he goes walking before breakfast, is sometimes dictating to his secretary by 7:30, gets in an hour of work before he goes to the office. He leaves the Munitions building usually around 4:30, never later than 5, goes home to Woodley—the $800,000 estate that he bought when he became Secretary of State in 1929. There the program until dinner is a strenuous hour of deck tennis, often followed by bowling, swimming and sometimes riding, at which as an old cavalryman he excels. Said one of the younger guests of this program: "Next morning when I tried to get out of bed I fell over myself, I was that sore."
Evenings at dinner the Stimsons usually have guests. The Presbyterian Secretary of War, quietly but firmly pious, says grace. As a man must, who rises at 6, he turns in by n 130. Before midnight Woodley drops into darkness.
Man at War. The U.S. Army is not at war, but its Secretary is. Believing that the U.S. will some day have to fight Hitler, he is quite consciously trying to win its battles beforehand. Faced with the intricate problems of Lend-Lease aid to the Allies, he is daily called upon to balance the question of whether the U.S. will be safer if 50 new bombers are reserved for the Army against fighting to come, or sent to Britain, Chungking, Egypt or Singapore to bomb potential enemies today.
In making such decisions his background in world affairs is important. For today the U.S. Secretary of War has to be in part an international statesman or he cannot do his job. His Army trains at home in peace, but under the job that was handed him when the Lend-Lease Act was passed he is fighting a war on the battlefields of Europe.