New Deal for Italy?

The U.S. is to have a new No. 1 man--and perhaps a new policy--in troubled Italy. Colonel James Henderson Douglas Jr., 46, a Chicago lawyer and businessman now serving in the Air Transport Command, has agreed to resign from the Army Air Forces early this month and join the Allied Commission in Rome.

Tall, dark-haired Colonel Douglas will replace white-haired Rear Admiral Ellery Wheeler Stone, also a former businessman (Postal Telegraph), as U.S. member of the Commission. No reflection on Admiral Stone, the change is part of the transition from military to civil supervision of Italy, which has its own national government but is still treated as a defeated and partly occupied enemy country. Douglas will drop his Army title, serve as a civilian commissioner.

Douglas is an lowan (Cedar Rapids), an alumnus of Princeton, Cambridge University, Harvard Law School, and a onetime Assistant Secretary of the Treasury (1932-33). A Republican, he got out of the Treasury soon after the Roosevelt New Deal came in.

During Admiral Stone's tenure, the main object of Allied rule in Italy was to make the country tenable for Allied armies. Now the troops are clearing out, and Commissioner Douglas' job will be political and economic. Before he took it on, he sought assurances that he would have a positive, clear-cut U.S. policy to apply in Italy. The lack of such a policy in the past hamstrung Admiral Stone, gave Italians a poor opinion of western democracy, and made occupied Italy practically a British fief.

Able, forthright James Douglas would not have taken the job unless he expected the U.S. to play a stronger, more intelligent hand in Italy.

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