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The Shadow of No. 1. Shortly after he announced that he would not run for a third term in '56, Governor Herter got a call from John Foster Dulles. Would Herter be willing to come to Washington and work under Dulles as Under Secretary? Eager to get back into his chosen field after the long governorship detour, Herter gladly said yes.
Now and then during his first year as the State Department's No. 2 man, Herter regretted that yes. Strong-minded Foster Dulles was so toweringly No. 1 at State that No. 2 inevitably found himself uncomfortably overshadowed—especially after having been No. 1 for four years in his own Massachusetts bailiwick.
With his innate sense of what is fitting, Herter kept himself in the background during his first few months at State, listened much and talked little. After the often grating brusqueness of Herbert Hoover Jr., his predecessor as Under Secretary, Herter's unflagging courtesy and willingness to listen boosted departmental morale. But his occasional exasperated "goddams" packed a wallop. Gradually, State Department hands came to see that behind Herter's gentleness was a strong and tenacious mind. "I learned one thing," reported an Assistant Secretary after emerging from Herter's office. "You've got to know every last detail when you talk to this guy."
Professional Polish. Even though he had the added job of running the Administration-wide Operations Control Board, Herter began feeling restless about having, as he saw it, too small a role in State Department decisionmaking. When the gossip about Herter's frustration broke out in the papers, Dulles began gradually turning over to Herter some broad sectors of responsibility: congressional relations, inter-American affairs, the Middle East, nuclear-test-ban negotiations. Even in these sectors, Dulles and the President still made the top-level decisions (sending troops to Lebanon, suspending U.S. nuclear tests for one year), but Herter handled the day-to-day conduct of policy. Herter, for example, drafted the directives for the U.S. test-ban negotiating team at Geneva and their drastic revision last week (see Foreign Relations).
In mid-February. Herter was prowling around a cattle auction in Walterboro, S.C. when he got word that Dulles wanted to talk to him on the telephone. He took the call on an old-fashioned wall phone, got the word from Dulles that he was heading off for Walter Reed Hospital for his hernia operation. "Don't rush back," said Dulles. "If you do, they'll think I'm worse than I am—and if I am that bad, you'll need the rest to handle the work."
As he took over as Acting Secretary, Herter strained to avoid even the faintest appearance of grasping for his ailing boss's job. He refused, for example, to hold a single press conference. But Herter liked the job, and his friends knew it. After he sat in as the U.S. delegate at the NATO foreign ministers' meeting in Washington (TIME, April 13), he won high praise for his professional polish from some of Europe's top diplomats.
Unique Esteem. In carrying out U.S. foreign policy as Secretary of State, Herter will have the help of an experienced, brainy team that is regarded in Washington as by far the ablest crew in any Cabinet department. The top crewmen: