To Avoid Confusion

Who won the Wallace-Jones fight (TIME, July 12, et seq.)? Foxy old Cordell Hull.

A Washington saying of the past decade is that the city is littered with the bones of men who have opposed Cordell Hull; that the old Tennessean feuder works quietly and cautiously but he always gets his man. That man is anyone who tries to run any part of foreign policy while the State Department is still around. Ranked by protocol as No. 1 Cabinet officer, the Secretary of State normally bosses all U.S. dealings with foreign governments. His corps of deft protocol artists has never allowed a mere war agency to forget it.

Those who have had business abroad (Herbert Lehman's OFRR, Nelson Rockefeller's OCIAA, Elmer Davis' OWI) have slowly, painfully learned that all foreign business must funnel through the State Department. The hard-to-handle exception was Henry Wallace's Board of Economic Warfare. When BEW was scrapped by Executive Order, Secretary Hull promptly stepped up and claimed the scrap pile.

To the Office of War Mobilization's James F. Byrnes he penned a firm letter. Would OWM Czar Byrnes kindly make it clear, in writing, to all agencies concerned, that:

> Henceforward, OWM will use State Department facilities to "unify" all U.S. work touching on foreign supply, procurement, any other foreign economic matter.

> All agencies must describe their foreign plans in advance to the State Department, must get approval before going ahead.

> All actual dealings with foreign govern ments (at home or abroad) will be handled by the State Department.

>Officials hired by any Government agency to work outside the U.S. must be checked and approved by State.

>When non-State U.S. officials abroad want to get in touch with their Washington offices, State will handle the communications.

> State will appoint "in each significant center of operation ... a Director of Economic Operations" (responsible to Secretary Hull after the military moves out).

> State Department will sit on the board of directors of: 1) U.S. Commercial Corp., 2) Petroleum Reserve Corp.

"In order to avoid current confusion," Cordell Hull hoped politely that Czar Byrnes would issue these instructions to all agencies concerned "at the earliest possible moment."

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