For an Old Rugby Player

Harry Truman picked a mild-appearing man last week for what might well turn out to be one of the nation's roughest, toughest jobs: bossing the new Economic Stabilization Agency. The precarious honor went to meteoric Alan Valentine, who quit the presidency of the University of Rochester last June chiefly because he was not sure (at 49) that he had made the right choice of a career.

Behind Valentine was a life spent in universities, with some side trips into politics and into the business world. A Quaker, born in Glen Cove, N.Y., he went to Swarthmore where he played three years of varsity football, went to Oxford as a Rhodes Scholar and played on and coached the American 1924 Olympic champion Rugby team. He returned to teach English at Swarthmore, became Master of Pierson College at Yale, a professor of history and chairman of admissions, and finally at 34, president of richly endowed Rochester. Married, he has three children. Husky, handsome and emphatic, he became the lion of ladies' discussion groups, an inveterate speaker at Commencement Days.

A pre-World War II isolationist while president at Rochester, he sent scholarly messages to Congressmen opposing any change in the Neutrality Act, opposing Lend-Lease as the road to certain U.S. involvement in the conflict. In 1940, he headed the Democrats-for-Willkie group. He became a director of a number of topflight U.S. corporations, e.g., Freeport Sulphur Co., Buffalo, Rochester & Pittsburgh Railway Co., Bausch & Lomb Optical Co. In 1948, he served for a year as chief of the ECA mission to The Netherlands and was made a Grand Officer of the Order of Orange-Nassau by Queen Juliana.

Harry Truman did not reach into a hat for him, nor did he grab him from Bill Boyle's ever-ready list of faithful party hacks. Dr. Valentine for years has been the great & good friend of NSRB Chairman W. Stuart Symington, who recommended him for the job. Valentine will operate under Coordinator Symington in the new, complex machinery being set up to run the nation's rearmament effort. Valentine's job: plan price and wage policies, and in the end, when he and the President think it is necessary, clamp on controls. Under Valentine will be directors of wage stabilization and price controls--precarious posts still to be filled.

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