Louis Arthur Johnson last week joined the company of men who once served Franklin Roosevelt. In that company (Lewis Douglas, John Garner, Raymond
Moley, Rex Tugwell, Jim Farley, John Hanes, et al.) were some of greater stature than the departed Assistant Secretary of War. But among them was none more loyal at the start, more bitter at the finish.
How loud, indiscreet Mr. Johnson was appointed Assistant Secretary in 1937 and told that he soon would be Secretary; how he and measeling Secretary Harry Hines Woodring were allowed to frustrate each other and the War Department for three racking years—even for gossipy Washington, this was a story too old, too petty in detail to bear extended repetition last week. What Washington did buzz about was the cynical climax of that story.
By law, the Assistant Secretary of War is no official underling. His responsibilities (for purchasing Army equipment, planning to mobilize the U. S. man-&-money-power for war) outweigh those of most full-fledged Cabinet members. That Assistant Secretary Johnson, despite his sundry deficiencies, had done a standout job, one of his harshest critics (Columnist Hugh Johnson) admitted last week. That Louis Johnson's new boss, Republican Secretary Henry Lewis Stimson, should not want to keep an ambitious, embittered assistant was understandable. That the President at such a stage of Defense (see p. 17) should have tossed out the one War Department executive who knew most about the job was not so understandable.
Yet Franklin Roosevelt encouraged gullible Mr. Johnson to go to the Democratic Convention in Chicago last fortnight, put out feelers for the Vice-Presidential nomi nation, go down ignominiously with 16 others of the faithful who were sacrificed to Henry Wallace (see p. 12). Disillusioned Mr. Johnson crawled back to Washington. There he wrote a letter to "My Dear Mr. President," black with reminders that at the President's request he had passed up his last chance to resign with dignity when Henry Stimson was appointed; that "my Commander in Chief and longtime friend" now left no alternative but resignation. Louis Johnson sighed that he would go back to his law practice (in Clarksburg, W. Va.), signed himself "obediently yours," hopped off to California in an Army plane.
Mr. Roosevelt in a reply to "Dear Louis" regretfully accepted, said that he did so only at Mr. Stimson's instance, then actually invited Louis Johnson, who could not work under Mr. Stimson, to work over him as a Presidential assistant ("my eyes and ears . . . reporting to me on the continuing progress of the entire national defense program"). Offhand, it did not look as if there were a spot where aggressive Mr. Johnson's talents would be of less use, or where his equal talent for getting in other people's hair would wreak greater havoc with the Defense program.