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New Trail. Many Americans would hesitate to predict that Ed Stettinius would rank with Secretaries of State who are U.S. household names: with John Quincy Adams, who helped negotiate the "most popular" peace treaty in U.S. history after the War of 1812, and who braintrusted James Monroe's famed Doctrine; with Daniel Webster, who ended the era of hate between Canada and the U.S.; with Seward, who bought Alaska at 4 a.m. one morning; with Elihu Root, who did his diplomatic best to mollify Latin America after Theodore Roosevelt seized Panama; or with John Hay, who by taking a British hint gave China an Open Door.
By now, as Winston Churchill had said, the U.S. is the "greatest military, naval and air power" in the world, a fact which was also a summons to greatness in diplomacy. No longer could U.S. policy be summed up, as in Admiral Mahan's day, in ten words: in Asia, cooperation; in the Caribbean, predominance; in Europe, abstention.
The U.S. was not yet an active partner in a world society, but the will, and part of the way, were there. No previous U.S. Secretary of State had had so much need for a sure foot on a new trail. But in his last major act as Under Secretary, Stettinius had made what was probably a serious diplomatic blunder: his assertion that the "traditional policy" of the U.S. is not to guarantee European frontiers, in particular the frontiers of Poland (TIME, Dec. 4). This was in line with the old "abstention" of American foreign policy, but it ignored the fact that the old line is now rounding a big curve. It ignored the fact that at Teheran Franklin Roosevelt had gone even farther afield by guaranteeing Iran's borders. And as one effect of restating such a "tradition" now, loud and prompt protests came from London and Paris last week.
The Abstemious One. Ed Stettinius was not exactly born with a silver spoon in his mouth, but he soon grew accustomed to using one. His father, a St. Louis orphan raised in a Jesuit school, made and lost a fortune as a boy plunger in Chicago's Wheat Pit. Stettinius Sr. was on his way back up—as an executive in a boiler factory—when Stettinius Jr. was born, Oct. 22, 1900, in a gaslit, greystone house along Chicago's famed Gold Coast.
By the time Ed Jr. was 15, his father was a big name in U.S. business as president of the Diamond Match Co. The House of Morgan put him in charge of the Allies' $3,000,000,000 war purchases in the U.S. Lord Northcliffe called the elder Stettinius "easily the ablest business organizer in the ranks of the Allies or the enemy." When the U.S. declared war on Germany, he became a $1-a-year aide to Elder Statesman Bernard Baruch.
At this time, young Ed had just emerged from Harstrom, a small Connecticut boarding school. His schoolmaster recommended him to the University of Virginia with qualifications: "Personal character—excellent, without a blemish. Seriousness of purpose —very good. Intellectual promise—fair."