"Dear Charlie"

Charles E. Wilson,* the strong man of WPB, went to the White House to resign, as he had twice before in the past nine months. He had a personal reconversion problem of his own: he wanted to get back to the presidency of General Electric. And he was sick & tired of months of WPB haggling and sniping. Once more Franklin Roosevelt begged him to stay on as WPB's executive vice chairman--at least until Germany fell.

"I left . . . with renewed inspiration," Charlie Wilson said later. The inspiration had a very practical basis: the same day Franklin Roosevelt announced that WPB Chairman Don Nelson was off to China "for several months." Two things seemed clear: Don Nelson had been exiled; Charlie Wilson was now in charge of WPB. The President had clearly taken Wilson's side in the long-smoldering Nelson-Wilson dispute.

What the fighting was about, besides a clash of personalities, was certainly not clear to the U.S. and did not seem to be clear even to Franklin Roosevelt. Nelson's friends pictured him as the friend of little business and reconversion, bravely battling the Army, the Navy, and Charlie Wilson. Wilson, however, insisted that it was he who eight months ago had drawn up WPB's only full-scale reconversion plans.

But Wilson was also the man in WPB that the Army & Navy went to, in order to get things done. He absorbed some of the Army & Navy's impatience at the growing talk of peace production when the battlefronts were short of many needed items. Like Lieut. General Brehon B. Somervell and others in the Army, Wilson had underestimated the strength of the national feeling that the European phase of the war is about over, that it is high time to think of peacetime readjustments.

Thus Charlie Wilson--despite the fact that he too wanted to quit his war job and reconvert G.E.--had come to seem the villain. And Donald Nelson, fumbling feebly with minuscule moves toward reconversion (he is called "Mr. Next Tuesday" by disgruntled WPBsters) had come to seem the hero of Reconversion Now,

Chinese Burial. By taking Wilson's side, the President set off a startlingly loud Washington uproar. Nelson's friends --who included a group of the New Deal's most expert hatchet men--called his Presidential mission a "Chinese burial." They charged that the man who was fighting for "the little fellow" was being "sent to Siberia," had been given a "kick in the teeth."

Hastily the President issued a statement dressing up the Nelson mission as of high importance, and saying such talk was "wrong . . . unjust ... a disservice" (TIME, Aug. 28).

But by thus mollifying Nelson and his friends, the President angered Charlie Wilson. Wilson could not be sure now whether Nelson had been kicked out or not. Back to the White House went Charlie, good and mad, a hot resignation in hand. This time he meant it. "Since . . . your request that I assume direction of WPB, there has been renewed circulation ... of stories that because of my former position as president [of G.E.] ... I am opposed to reconversion," he wrote. "These statements . . . were, in my opinion, inspired by subordinate officials [on] the personal staff of Mr. Nelson. . . I cannot answer them unless I employ publicity experts. I am unwilling to do that. The dissension within the organization does harm to the war production effort. Therefore, I tender herewith my resignation. . . ."

"A Few Words." The White House did not immediately announce Wilson's resignation. Next day, as if nothing had happened, Donald Nelson finally summoned some 150 top WPB men to a long: postponed "harmony" meeting. (Many times, according to Charlie Wilson, Nelson had promised to gather the feuding staff together to straighten out the quarrels, "but always manana.")

The meeting was scheduled for 11 a.m.

It was suddenly postponed until after noon--Don Nelson had a hurry-up summons to the White House. There, presumably, Franklin Roosevelt told Nelson of Wilson's resignation. But Nelson went straight from the White House to address his "harmony" meeting with glowing words for his good friend Charlie, who had done such a magnificent job. There never had been any real differences between the two of them, said Nelson. He trusted Charlie implicitly to keep things running while he was in China. He ended: "Charlie, I'd like you to say a few words." Up rose stocky Charles Wilson. Said he: "I have already resigned."

At the White House, at almost the same hour, Franklin Roosevelt released a "Dear Charlie" letter: "You have rendered outstanding service to your country. ... Of course, I have been aware of some dissension within the War Production Board. I had hoped it would disappear. . . . With reluctance I accept your resignation."

Between Ships. The President had to find a new WPBoss--and quick. The man he laid hands on just happened to be in town, between ships. He was 230-03. Lieut. Commander Julius A. ("Cap") Krug, 36, who was WPB's able No. 3 man until he went into the Navy five months ago. Krug, fresh from Europe, was waiting for reassignment to sea duty when Franklin Roosevelt hurriedly summoned him to the White House.

Next day, reluctantly, Cap Krug was out of Navy blues and into a grey-brown suit. He could expect a handful of resignations. The first: able Sidney J. Weinberg, who had been specifically drafted into WPB for the weird job of keeping the peace between Messrs. Nelson and Wilson.

Could Cap Krug expect to have full control at WPB ? No one knew. A reporter asked the President if Nelson would return to WPB after his China trip. The President dismissed it as an "iffy" question, too far in the future (see The Presidency).

Time for Decision. Meanwhile the U.S. still had no reconversion program. And the time for decision was here. Factories were being cut back as Army & Navy orders fell off; thousands were being let out of jobs, and the transition to civilian production was still to be faced.

Said the New York Times: "The President's role in this matter has been uncertain and vacillating. This latest dissension, moreover, raises once more much wider questions about the President's administrative policies. It is, after all, merely the latest of a long series of such disagreements--between General Short and Admiral Kimmel, Mr. Hillman and Mr. Knudsen, Mr. Ickes and Mr. Henderson, Mr. Eberstadt and Mr. Wilson, Mr. Patterson and Mr. Jeffers, Mr. Jeffers and Elmer Davis, Mr. Byrnes and the War Labor Board, Mr. Ickes and the War Labor Board, Chester Davis and Mr. Vinson, and, most notorious of all, between Vice President Wallace and Secretary Jones.

"The open controversies . . . have been so frequent and chronic as to point beyond the particular individuals ... to administrative failures on the part of the President himself. It will generally be found that he has either failed to appoint the right man to a key position; or failed to delegate sufficient power for the task ostensibly assigned; or failed to make clear to each official from the beginning precisely where his own power and responsibility began and ended; or failed to prevent duplication and conflict of powers; or failed to support an official fully . . .; or failed to discipline or remove an official the moment he overstepped his assigned power."

*Not to be confused (though he often is) with General Motors' Charles E. (for Erwin) Wilson, who became, respectively, vice president, executive vice president and president of G.M. at almost the same time as Charles E. (for Edward) Wilson won similar posts at G.E. When Charles Edward Wilson moved into his present home at No. 7 Hampton Road, Scarsdale, N.Y., Charles Eben Wilson, vice president of Worthington Pump & Machinery Corp., had just moved out of No. 7 Old Army Road, Scarsdale. To add to the confusion, G.E. also has an engineer named Charles Edward Wilson. Last week G.M.'s Charles Erwin Wilson reported that three Detroit friends had urged him not to quit WPB.

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