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Statesman Stimson was last week recrossing the Pacific, on a wallowing steamer from Manila to San Francisco. When he lands, he will have the widest ocean of all to cross—the ocean of public opinion. He passed muster as Secretary of War 20 years ago. But Secretaries of State are subjected to far closer scrutiny, especially in times of peace, than Secretaries of War. And especially in the Hoover Era will the State Department be scrutinized. The whole State personnel is waiting to see what further inroads may be made upon its prestige and prerogatives by the foreign agents of the Hooverized Department of Commerce. Patriots and pacifists alike are waiting to see what tangible results may come of the ambrosial Kellogg-Briand peace treaty. Will Statesman Stimson, whose first report on the Philippines heavily adumbrated a survey by a vast public utility corporation, stand for Dollar Diplomacy? Will he be a yes-peg or a Statesman in his own right?
In Statesman Stimson's mind, the last question will never be answered save in one way. Stimson is as Stimson does. The Stimson stature is slight but sturdy, carried with ramrod erectness. From a narrow oval face, his eyes look coldly out through pince-nez. Well-cut lips speak clear crisp English. Energy, restrained and directed with brusque selfdiscipline, is his chief administrative characteristic. He prefers to cover a given distance in careful steps rather than in one reckless bound. He has a temper sometimes quick.
Nationalistic in outlook, he, like onetime Secretary of State Hughes, dutifully signed the Root round-robin of 1920 saying that Harding's election was the best means of getting the U. S. into the League of Nations. His appointment is of no political significance to New York, for his support came, not from the shirt-sleeve party workers, but from Elder Statesmen Root and Hughes.
Secretary of the Treasury. Andrew William Mellon's name was politically meaningless when President Harding, on the advice of the late Philander Chase Knox, popped it before the public in 1921. But in eight years the shy little man, who for so long had ruled industrial empires from behind a Pittsburgh bank desk only to discover belatedly the pleasure and prestige of public service, has spread that name into every crack and cranny of the business world. He has grown from a person to a personification until now no Republican President, mindful of the value of public confidence, could function without his endorsement. Mild-mannered, low-voiced, this third richest man in the U. S. has far outdistanced his historic prototype, Alexander Hamilton, in point of continuous Treasury service. Hamilton served six years. Mr. Mellon enters his ninth year.
Secretary of War. James William Good, pink and grey, smiling-eyed, is Iowa born and bred. His life—he is now 62—has successfully combined law and politics, which carried him from City Attorney of Cedar Rapids to the Hoover Cabinet in two decades.
Mr. Good went to Congress in 1909 from the Iowa district in which President Hoover was born. He rose to be chairman of the House Appropriations Committee and came to know Mr. Hoover as a Secretary of Commerce with whom it was pleasant to work in Budget conferences because he (Hoover) knew what he wanted. In June, 1921, Mr. Good resigned from Congress to go to Chicago and fortify his own bank balance.