New Blood

At Potsdam, Secretary of State James Francis Byrnes had marveled at the efficiency with which General George Catlett Marshall operated his office-away-from-home. Curious, he asked the General how he did it. The reply: "Get a man like McCarthy."

Last week Jimmy Byrnes did. From General Marshall's personal staff he drafted 33-year-old Colonel Frank McCarthy, ex-reporter (Richmond News Leader) and ex-pressagent for the 1937 Broadway farce, Brother Rat, made him an Assistant Secretary of State.

Around Washington, Frank McCarthy was a boy wonder about whom no one knew very much. Like General Marshall, he was a V.M.I, graduate. His work for the General had been confidential. At State, his job will be to streamline the Department, bring order out of the endless paper shuffling.

Up from B.A. State's reorganization was under way (TIME, Aug. 27). Last week Jimmy Byrnes accepted the resignation of Assistant Secretary Nelson Rockefeller--the day after Rockefeller, in a Boston speech, had soundly spanked the Argentine Government (see LATIN AMERICA). But he had long been a target for his part in bringing Argentina to the San Francisco Conference.

In his place, Jimmy Byrnes put a man about whose opinions and actions there was little doubt: big, bluff Spruille Braden, U.S. Ambassador to Argentina since the U.S. recognized the Farrell Government last April. In Buenos Aires, Spruille Braden had resisted the threats and insults of fascist-minded Argentines who called him a "Yankee pig" and shouted "Death to Braden!" He had told the Government time & again that the U.S. would stand for no fascist finagling.

Moreover, he knew South America well. He had gone to Chile for Westinghouse Electric in 1920 and had represented U.S. business or government in South America almost ever since. He was the U.S. representative at the 1935-38 Chaco peace conference, later became U.S. Ambassador to Colombia and Cuba. As Assistant Secretary in charge of Latin American affairs, his booming voice would now be heard everywhere south of the border.

He made it plain that he would speak the same language in his new job. Said he: "My policy respecting Argentine and U.S. relations will not alter in the slightest. On the contrary, the larger opportunities of my new post will make my efforts even more effective."

On to London. Another even more important change was apparently in the offing. At a Washington press conference last week, Jimmy Byrnes went out of his way to praise Assistant Secretary James Clement Dunn.

Newsmen were puzzled at first. Then rumor said that Jimmy Byrnes would take Jimmy Dunn with him to the forthcoming Council of Foreign Ministers meeting in London, and leave him there as the permanent U.S. deputy on the Council. As such, Jimmy Dunn would in effect be the U.S. Under Secretary of State abroad, and a super-Ambassador.

No one in the State Department has been more unmercifully attacked by the liberal-left wing press than Jimmy Dunn. (Reputedly, he had a big hand in the pro-Franco and pro-Vichy appeasement policies of the early war years.) But Jimmy Dunn is also a shy, aloof, painstaking worker who knows State Department doings inside out. He started as a clerk 26 years ago, married an Armour, lives fashionably on Massachusetts Avenue.

He has rarely bothered to answer the attacks on him. Once, under Congressional inquiry, he replied icily: "There have been a great many misrepresentations and some outright lies about my position, but those who know me know differently." In his new job, the U.S. public would soon get to know him.

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