Mr. Byrnes and General Marshall

The news of Secretary Byrnes' resignation and of the appointment of General Marshall to fill his place must be received with mixed emotions. After an almost disastrous beginning, Mr. Byrnes had steadily grown up in the job, learning how to be firm but not hostile with the Russians, learning where American self-interest in walking the Bevin chalk line ended and pulling British chestnuts out of the fire began. In a large measure, the over-all success of the recent meeting of the U.N. Assembly in New York is owning to the efforts of a man who it is now revealed wanted to resign as long ago as last July. It is with genuine regret, then, that the majority of Americans watch the departure of Mr. Byrnes from the Secretaryship of State.

The source of confusion lies in the President's selection of General Marshall to succeed him. He is an unusual military man and his qualifications for the job are many. A non-West Point soldier, General Marshall's military brilliance and overwhelming devotion to duty, as evidenced by his rumored refusal of the job of Supreme Commander for the sake of Allied harmony and his acceptance of the mission to China when he had every right to look forward to his retirement are well-known. He is also perhaps one of the few living Americans of any public importance who was in attendance at all of the great Allied Conferences during the war and who is on speaking terms with everyone from Stalin to Winston Churchill. His now completed mission to China, culminating in his "plague on both your houses" report has perhaps foreshadowed the first favorable turn in our relations with China since the mission of the another general (a civilian brand), Patrick J. Hurley.

If there are many factors which qualify General Marshall for the job so there are several which severely disqualify him. First and fundamentally, he will be a military man in a civil post. As deTocqueville observed over a century ago, officers, in democratic armies "contract tastes and wants wholly distinct from those of the nation, a fact which may be thus accounted for: Among democratic nations that man who becomes an officers severs all the ties that bound him to civil life; he leaves it forever, and no interest urges him to return to it. . . . As the wants of an officer are distinct from those of the country, he may, perhaps, ardently desire war, or labor to bring about a revolution, at the very moment when the nation is most desirous of stability and peace." Although General Marshall's devotion to the cause of peace cannot be denied, it is nevertheless expecting too much to hope that a man who has spent his entire career in the service can be attuned to the wants and needs of the great mass of the people.

Secondly, President Truman in making the appointment shows once again an alarming tendency to put his entire faith in certain specialized types of men-men from Missouri whom he knows and trusts, and in high Army officers whom, he, as a one-time major in the artillery once knew and respected. With Lieutenant General Walter Bedell Smith now directing American affairs in our most crucial foreign post, Moscow, and General Groves still in possession of a potent voice in the control of atomic energy, the appointment of General Marshall to the second highest position in the Government is the piece of brass which breaks the camel's back.

Finally, the record of military men-in-government throughout our history has by and large been a sorry one, however well-intentioned some of them may have been. For in addition to their psychological disqualifications, they have on the whole been uninformed on all matters relating to government. Of General Marshall, it can certainly be said that he brings to a job which requires a knowledge of economics and foreign trade a woeful lack of information. But the fact of the appointment remains--and General Marshall's tremendous popularity with the Congress assures instant Senate ratification of his appointment. With the great issues of the peace still unsettled, the people of the United States can only fervently wish him well.