Mr. Hull Resigns

On his 73rd birthday, last Oct. 2, the Administration's No. 1 Cabinet officer showed up as usual at his office, but he complained: "I'm sick and I know it." Next day he stayed home. For the past five weeks, with an occasional bedside visit from Franklin Roosevelt, good, grey Cordell Hull has lain abed in the Naval Hospital at Bethesda, Md., under observation and treatment for a throat ailment and exhaustion. This week, reluctantly and on his doctor's advice, Cordell Hull resigned as Secretary of State.

His letter of resignation eloquently told his deep disappointment. "It is a supreme tragedy to me personally," he wrote to Franklin Roosevelt. It was clear that he felt his departure a simple duty to the nation.

Franklin Roosevelt replied in kind. The resignation, he wrote, "has hit me between wind and water." To Franklin Roosevelt, Cordell Hull is "Father of the United Nations," and he hoped that Cordell Hull would be able to preside when the first, triumphant United Nations assembly is held. The man who had directed U.S. foreign affairs for twelve years--longer by four years than any other man in history--will continue, the President said, to be a sort of White House adviser.

Old Fighter. In many ways, Cordell Hull's place was unique. Among his diplomatic victories he could list such achievements as the reciprocal trade agreements, the Good Neighbor policy, the 1943 Moscow Declaration and the Dumbarton Oaks agreement. The Hull failures have also been impressive. In success or failure, Mr. Hull usually preserved his native dignity. That dignity was sore beset when Franklin Roosevelt torpedoed the 1933 London Economic Conference from under him. It did not desert him (though it called to its aid some white-hot Tennessee cuss words) when Pearl Harbor caught him politely conferring with two grinning Japanese diplomats. It kept him at least outwardly calm when New Deal left-wingers shrilly accused him of appeasing Petain, Darlan, Franco and Badoglio.

But in 51 years of public life--as Tennessee legislator, backwoods jurist, U.S. Congressman, Democratic National Committee Chairman, U.S. Senator, and Secretary of State--Cordell Hull acquired a wide reputation for a single trait. Most U.S. citizens, both admirers and detractors, were convinced that Cordell Hull was a pretty tough old party who fought hard for the things he believed in.

New Diplomat. The scramble for Hull's job was short, eager and one-sided. The biggest and fastest boom billowed up for OWM Boss Jimmy Byrnes. The dopesters had other names, too, especially the three "Ws"--Wallace, Winant and Welles. But most of the dopesters were wrong.

At his noon press conference, Franklin Roosevelt had no news about a successor. Three hours later he suddenly nominated and sent to the Senate the name of platinum-topped Edward R. ("Junior") Stettinius Jr., 44, acting Secretary of State. The choice was a surprise.

Handsome Ed Stettinius thus became the next-to-youngest Secretary of State in U.S. history.* A onetime big-business executive, specializing as a front man (General Motors, North American Aviation, U.S. Steel), he learned the basics of government protocol in NIRA, OPM, Lend-Lease. He has been learning diplomacy as Under Secretary of State since September 1943. Few doubted that under his regime the real Secretary of State would continue to be Franklin Roosevelt.

* Youngest: Edmund Randolph, who took the job under George Washington in 1794, when he was 40.

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