Military High Command?

There may have been progress toward a United Command last week. The nation saw only one piece of evidence: a photograph, taken on the White House steps, of the three key military men of the U.S. (see cut). Closeted with Franklin Roosevelt had been his new personal Chief of Staff to the Commander in Chief, Admiral William D. Leahy. Also present were the Navy's Commander in Chief of the U.S. Fleet Admiral Ernest J. King; the Army's four-starred Chief of Staff General George C. Marshall.

Admiral Leahy said they had discussed his new job. There was no further word.

Then the Navy Department put out what looked like big, spot news: an anonymous naval officer had taken full command of all units in the Aleutians. But next day a Navy spokesman at Seattle said this was stale stuff, that a Naval officer had been in command since before the Japanese struck.

The pressure of public opinion was still strong for a generalissimo. Though President Roosevelt himself had denned Admiral Leahy's role as mere "legman," the nation still speculated, with its fingers crossed. Now able Detroit News Correspondent Jay G. Hayden reported that widower Admiral Leahy would soon replace newly married Harry Hopkins as the White House tenant who talks things over with Mr. Roosevelt. Wrote Newsman Hayden hopefully:

"A frequently expressed criticism of Hopkins has been that he is even more an incorrigible optimist than even Mr. Roosevelt himself, and that it would be better if the President has as his intimate companion a man more inclined to emphasize the dark spots in the war picture."

On this, as on many other questions, there was no direct answer from the White House. The President of the U.S. had almost dropped out of the people's sight. His comings & goings, if any, were cloaked in military secrecy. His press conferences were brief, un-newsy.

In peacetime, the U.S. had always been intimately conscious of the big man in the seersucker suit, grinning around his up-tilted cigaret holder, mopping his brow with a heavy, mole-speckled hand. Now the nation saw him not at all. It could piece his doings together only through an occasional secondhand glimpse such as at Harry Hopkins' wedding last week (see col. 2).

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