Secrets of State

While the world waited for news of the Big Three meeting, Joseph Clark Grew was Acting Secretary of State in Washington. He made the most of his newsmaking opportunity. He discussed the U.S. part in settling Yugoslavia's trouble (see above), restated U.S. policy on war crimes, explained how U.S. eagerness to relieve France's economic distress was blocked by the tragic necessities of military supply.

But active Mr. Grew, through no particular fault of his own, also had a most unhappy time. The details of his misery were buried behind the "off the record" secrecy of press conferences.

What Isn't Changed? In speaking of Yugoslavia, Mr. Grew insisted that Ambassador Patterson had not "participated" in the negotiations. All London knew that Mr. Patterson had participated. Mr. Grew himself said that the Ambassador had conferred often with King Peter.

The fact that Harry Hopkins in London had preached the new doctrine of responsible U.S. participation, in contradiction of this State Department talk, left the British baffled and distrustful. It also baffled and disturbed the State Department which would not even acknowledge to itself the most important fact of current U.S. foreign policy--i.e., that President Roosevelt has repealed its (and his) old policy of abstention and non-responsibility (TIME, Jan. 15).

Instead the State Department resorted to a mumbo-jumbo of wishful nonsense. Prize specimen: "You cannot say that our policy is ever static. It is developing with new developments. But there has been no change in our policy."

Cracked a Washington correspondent: "I wonder if the Department considers pregnancy a development or a change."

Whose Punishment? In his statement on war crimes, Mr. Grew reaffirmed past U.S. declarations for rigorous punishment of war criminals. But he evaded the central point of controversy--how to punish Nazis for crimes against their own countrymen.

Yet Mr. Grew's opposite number in Britain, Richard Kidston Law, last week explained British policy to the House of Commons: No. 1 war criminals like Hitler and Mussolini should be directly disposed of by the Allies; offenses committed by lesser Germans against Jews and other nationals of the Reich should not be considered "war crimes," but nevertheless should be punished by the government to be set up by the Allies in Germany.

The State Department was obviously suffering from a Mrs. Grundy complex, afraid to mention or to face the facts of diplomatic life, hopeful that an unctuous phrase would serve as a substitute for making sense.

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