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New Man. Every Assistant Secretary of War since 1921 has been a veteran of World War I and an American Legionnaire ; all but two have been lawyers. Louis Johnson's successor failed to fill these requirements in one notable respect: Robert Porter Patterson, although he belongs to the Legion, is in no sense "a Legion man" in a job which the Legion long since took for its own. Major Patterson was decorated for bravery in the A. E. F., served in the same division with, but barely knew, Colonel Henry Stimson. After World War I, when both were distinguished attorneys in Manhattan, they became firm friends. Soon after Henry Stimson became Herbert Hoover's Secretary of State, able Republican Robert Patterson was appointed to the U. S. District bench in New York. Franklin Roosevelt last year upped him to the Second (New York, Connecticut, Vermont) Circuit Court of Appeals to succeed Judge Robert Manton, convicted of conspiring to sell decisions of his court.
Now 49, Judge Patterson was wearing an Army private's blue fatigue overalls when he got his new job last week. In fact he was on the lowest detail which an Army private can get: kitchen police (taking out garbage, chopping wood) at the Plattsburg training camp. Colonel James I. Muir, the camp commander, forthwith ordered him out of the kitchen, was relieved to catch K. P. Patterson just before he began his menial chore.
By most accounts, Robert Patterson's appointment was a good choice. But the new Assistant Secretary will have to hump himself to do credit to Franklin Roosevelt for making a change at such a time. Said Columnist Hugh Johnson: "It [the Assistant-Secretaryship] is no task for an amateur. . . . It would take a new man a year even to get the feel of it. We have no years to spare—not even days."