On to Berlin

Within a few days President Truman, a shrewd and practical politician, would be off to meet a shrewd Briton and a practical Russian. It would be his first trip to Europe since he sailed for France as an artillery officer in World War I.

Before he left, the President had had a busy fortnight in the field of foreign relations. Out of it had come:

P:Assurance of Senate ratification of the new world charter (see below). P:An informal vote of confidence from the U.S. public: the Gallup poll reported that 87% of U.S. citizens approve the way he has handled his job. (President Roosevelt's wartime high: 84%, right after Pearl Harbor.) P:An important Cabinet shift.

As everybody expected, the President dismissed earnest, young Edward R. Stet-tinius Jr. as Secretary of State, made him the U.S. representative on the World Security Council, a not-yet-existent job which nobody knew much about, but which sounded promising. To replace him, the President, to nobody's surprise, chose South Carolina's James Francis Byrnes, 66.

Good Friend. The change was good Truman politics. In Jimmy Byrnes he got a regular Democrat as well as one liked by almost all Senate and House members. Harry Truman wanted most of all to get along with Congress on foreign affairs. Byrnes was also a good friend; a TrumanByrnes team should work together smoothly. Byrnes knows Washington and contemporary U.S. Government as few men do--he has been a Representative, Senator, Supreme Court Justice and "Assistant President" to Franklin Roosevelt. Harry Truman might have wished for a man with greater experience in foreign affairs--perhaps a 20-year-younger Henry L. Stim-son--but in Byrnes he got the other qualities he wanted.

What would the change mean in U.S. foreign relations? In the light of Jimmy Byrnes's record, an estimate would go something like this:

"A more consistent U.S. foreign policy can be expected with Jimmy Byrnes as Secretary of State. In all probability it will eventually be carried out by a better-oiled and organized machine than that which operated under Cordell Hull and Ed Stettinius. This policy will be businesslike, straightforward and more easily understood.

"The most important gain--consistency --will arise from the fact that for the first time in twelve years the White House and the State Department can be expected to think alike. The twists and turns of U.S. policy, which once bewildered our allies as well as our enemies, can be expected to straighten out into a more surely predictable course.

"Byrnes's reputation is that of a skillful compromiser, able to compel agreement by patience, charm of manner and an elastic mind. He has the realism--and sometimes the cynicism--of the profes sional politician. All of the evidence is that he is essentially conservative, a gradualist in all his thinking. On one major point Secretary Byrnes will certainly agree with President Truman: U.S. policy will be much more American than Anglo-American. Jimmy Byrnes will be with the President in any strong and specific assertion of U.S. rights and interests."

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