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                                                                              ╚January 6, 1947

Man of the Year:James F. Byrnes

"Either-Or"



    After 28 weeks of discussion in 82 meetings, the U.N. Atomic
Energy Commission this week finally sent its recommendations to
the Security Council. The vote was 10 to 0; Russia and Poland
abstained. The road to effective international control of the
atom still ribboned away indefinitely into the distance -- and
the next two sections to be traveled would require unanimity. But
the long A.E.C. survey had shown the only likely route.

    Greatest Step? In the clearest terms he had yet used, Bernard
Baruch told A.E.C. why the U.S. would not yield its atomic know-
how unless the control plan included specific guarantees against
veto protection for violators. Baruch said that the A.E.C.
recommendations would "die aborning" unless "all of the great
powers" on the Council accepted them. He added: "It has been said
that if a great nation decided to violate a treaty, no
agreements, however solemn, will prevent such violation; that if
a great nation does not have the right to release itself from its
obligation by veto the result will be war. I agree. I believe
that a clear realization of this would be the greatest step
toward peace that has been taken in history. Let the terms of
this treaty realize that its willful breach means punishment and,
if necessary, war. Then we will not lightly have breaches and
evasions. . . .

    "Gentlemen, it is either -- or. Either you agree that a
criminal should have this right . . or you vote for this sound
and basic principle of enduring justice and plain common sense."

    Other members, notably France's Pamadi and Britain's Cadogan,
did not see the issue in quite such dramatically black-&-white
terms. But after Andrei Gromyko warned that Russia was ready to
call for an item-by-item discussion of the whole recommendation,
everybody was willing to have A.E.C. pass the argument up to the
Security Council.

    Only Gromyko, whose shrewd, stubborn in-fighting for Russian
views was rewarded this week by a promotion to Deputy Foreign
Minister, publicly and directly questioned Baruch's
interpretation. Said he: "What the representative of the U.S.
proposes actually is a revision of the [U.N.] Charter. The fact
that the American proposal provides for a voluntary
relinquishment of the so-called 'veto'. . . does not change the
situation." But this was a milder Soviet objection than many
previous ones.

    Double Abstention. Last week when the A.E.C. considered
actual enforcement of international atomic controls, a much more
serious difficulty reared its head. The report said: "The
international control authority will require broad privileges of
movement and inspection, including rights to conduct surveys by
ground and air . . . to determine what areas may be suspected of
containing clandestine activities . . . . Aerial surveys are
essential in some circumstances."

    If atomic energy was ever to be subjected to international
policing, such inspection would be a reasonable requirement. But
how many great powers would submit to aerial survey? When the
aerial survey passage of the report came up for discussion,
Russia's Semen P. Alexandrov, who had already stated that he was
"not participating," participated just long enough to insist that
the record show that he had specifically abstained from
discussion of any such notion.

THE NATIONS
The Year of the Bullbat

    Convalescence is a nervous time, exuberant, but shot through
with real and fancied dangers; a frustrating time, irrational,
irascible and full of hope. The world of 1946 was convalescent.

    -- The U.S. Army sent a radar impulse to the moon, heard it
bounce back. This was the farthest stretch of human
communication. It said nothing whatever.

    -- The U.S. was still (in uneasy probability) the only nation
armed with the atomic bomb; the U.S. Army & Navy, before
demonstrating it at Bikini, ordered a survey of caves for use in
the day when its bombs might not be complete protection against
another's.

    -- In India 400 millions, in Burma 17 millions, in Indonesia
72 millions made notable strides toward national independence,
without showing much evidence of progress in self-government.

    -- The French and Italian black markets had plenty in the
midst of want. Britain had want in the midst of socialism (which
most Britons, nevertheless, were still determined to keep).
Russia had pushed out her borders and was, for the first time in
history, the strongest nation in Europe; no organized internal
political opposition to the Government existed. yet, so great was
their feeling of insecurity that some of Russia's masters spent
their time chivvying poets, composers and clowns whose art was
deemed subtly out of step with the regime.

    -- U.S. college population bulged to 2,000,000 (double that
of 1936) without assuring any comparable multiplication of
national wisdom. Patients in U.S. mental hospitals also reached
600,000 as against 516,000 ten years ago. In the U.S. divorces
were one-third as frequent as marriages; in Egypt, nearly half.

    -- Strikes gnawed bigger bites than ever before in the U.S.
economy without increasing the power of the unions or the living
standards of the workers. Most dramatic was the rail strike in
May, which collapsed when Harry Truman threw the full weight of
his presidential office at two men whom few had heard of before
and fewer have heard of since. (Goats of the Year were Alexander
Whitney of the Brotherhood of Railroad Trainmen and Alvanley
Johnston of the Brotherhood of Locomotive Engineers.)

    Woman of the Year. Though 1946 was unquiet with the drums of
war behind and the danger of war ahead, a deeply happy thread ran
through its garish pattern; it was a year of homecoming and,
therefore, a woman's year. To loyalties older than flags jealous
governments had released some 60 million men. (The Americans
chafed noisily at demobilization delays, and returned horrified
by the scarcity of water closets and breakfast foods beyond the
oceans; the Russians returned discontented at the remembrance of
fine houses, fabulous watches, and women with soft hands across
the Oder, the Danube and the Bug.)

    The women of 1946 (most of them) had their men back, a joy
tempered by fears of wars to come. The nations were quarreling
again; the year's news was dominated by the opposed efforts of
Russia's Molotov and America's Byrnes to reap or hold advantage
at the peace tables. The women, who wanted peace in their time
and their sons' time, anxiously watched as the conflict over
lands and lives and faiths took an intricate, peculiarly
masculine shape in treaty clauses, commas and semicolons.

    Besides the firm assurance of lasting peace, 1946's woman had
other quests. In the U.S. she scrabbled for dwelling space, for
bread (in the spring), for meat (in the fall) and for sugar (at
year's end). In China's Hunan Province she sought any food at all
(including a whitish clay called, pathetically, "Goddess of
Mercy"), but she did not find enough, and thousands starved while
relief distribution was immobilized by red tape. In Germany she
sought cigarets; in Russia, shoes; in Britain, sheets. She
learned (what she had long suspected) that privation marched with
the victorious armies as well as with the vanquished. Her
frustration was sharply symbolized by one elderly woman of
Worcester, Mass., who stood on a street corner futilely waving
while bus after crowded bus passed her by. Finally, she stepped
in front of one, stamped her foot and for 20 minutes she and the
driver sought a duel of wills as obdurate as two peacemaking
statesmen. This unidentified Worcesterite, impatient at the
complexities that lay between her and simple goals, was the Woman
of the Year.

    The Gods Depart. The Man of the Year would not be found among
the very great. The super-criminals and benevolent dreamers, the
movers and shakers of the 1930s and of the war years had died or
stepped back toward the shadows. Stalin still had more power than
any man alive, but he wielded it increasingly through others,
conserved his strength and (reportedly) worked on his memoirs
like any good, grey 19th Century British empire-builder.
Churchill was still the world's greatest orator, but a
statesman's words, unlike a poet's, need power to give them
weight; Churchill, testy and grim, was not in power. (Sample
quote of 1946: "The American eagle sits on his perch, a large
strong bird with formidable beak and claws. There he sits,
motionless, and Mr. Gromyko is sent every day to prod him with a
sharp sickle, now on his beak, now under his wing, now in his
tail feathers. All the time the eagle keeps quite still. But it
would be a great mistake to suppose that nothing is going on
inside the breast of the eagle. I venture to give this friendly
hint to my old wartime comrade, Marshal Stalin.") Bull-necked
Ernest Bevin had rushed into 1946 snorting to U.N. and to the
world a great commoner's bold concept of democracy. But Bevin was
sick, and he, too, as the year went on, was content to see the
bold words fly where the real power was. Bernard M. Baruch's
long, thin hands held the world's No.I problem: at year's end he
succeeded in advancing it from the Atomic Energy Commission to
the Security Council, where the big fight would come.

    In Japan MacArthur, ruling through an ex-god, was trying one
of the boldest experiments in human history; but 1946 gave little
hint of how his attempt to remake a whole people would come out.
Throughout 1946 Pope Pius XII had been a symbol of Western
civilization's resistance to the rule of materialism; but the
Communists, unlike the mountains, would not be moved by faith;
the struggle that engaged the Pope was fought currently in the
field of politics. For a time it looked as if France's Georges
Bidault, as leader of Europe's only strong new political
movement, Christian socialism, might be 1946's man; but as the
year ended and the Fourth French Republic began, Bidault was out
of office (and apartment hunting). In China Chiang Kai-shek
gained ground on two fronts: he beat the Communists in the field
and sponsored a constitutional assembly which worked through
democratic process to China's first constitution. Chiang,
however, still had far to go toward unifying and rehabilitating
his country.

    Gargoyles & Gladiators. With the coal strike, John L. Lewis,
the Great Gargoyle, bid vigorously for Villain of the Year, but
Lewis came in second. Theodore Bilbo had been exposed to national
view for 20 years, but not until 1946 did the U.S. really savor
the fulsome putrescence of Bilbo's bigotry.

    Theater's and Cinema's Man of the Year was Laurence Olivier,
whose Oedipus and Hotspur reminded Broadway of the difference
between adequacy and excellence, and whose Henry V could not have
reminded Hollywood of anything it had ever seen before. Sportsmen
of the year came in pairs: Jack Kramer and Ted Schoroeder re-won
the Davis Cup for the U.S. in the year's last week, and Army's
Doc Blanchard and Glenn Davis made their last appearance in the
game against Navy that was almost lost in two of the most
exciting minutes of football history. (President Truman had left
the stadium and missed those final two minutes; he missed so many
other plays in 1946 that his Gallup poll popularity score fell
from 87% to 32%.)

    Tinker's Dam. Had 1946 ended as it began, Molotov would have
been the year's man. He rode the postwar Russian flood, whipping
it with a hard wind of propaganda. It welled up to the Persian
plateau 22 miles from Teheran; it seeped deeply into China,
licked at Tripolitania, reached for the Dardanelles, almost
engulfed Trieste, soaked Poland, Hungary, Bulgaria, Rumania,
Yugoslavia, threatened Germany, Austria, and even (through
Russia's Communist Parties) Italy and France.

    At first the West, especially the U.S., was thrown off
balance by this assault. The West had forgotten what happens to
wartime coalitions when victory removes the pressure that holds
them together; it had forgotten (though Russia never ceased
reminding it) how great was the economic, political and moral
gulf between the two systems.

    Before the year was out, however, the Russian flood was
contained. On the dam that held it many men had labored -- Bevin
and Bidault, General Lucius Clay in Germany, Mark Clark in
Austria. The Netherlands' Eelco van Kleffens and Belgium's Paul-
Henri Spaak in U.N., MacArthur in Japan, Chiang Kai-shek in
China, and, eminently, Senator Arthur Vandenberg in the U.S. But
the dam's chief builder was James F. Byrnes of Spartanburg, S.C.,
who became the firm and patient voice of the U.S. in the councils
of the world.

    Byrnes at 67 had accomplished the big job of 1946, and in so
doing he had grown in stature more than any other public figure
of the year. As the year began many regarded him as a mere fixer.
Yet by patient, purposeful tinkering with the details of the
satellite treaties, he managed to get over to the Russians and
the world that the U.S. had planted the weight of its power in
the path of the Russian advance. What Jimmy said about Trieste
and freedom of the Danube had its effect on bigger issues, such
as the Russian bid for control of Germany and the Dardanelles.
Tinker Jimmy's dam was a jerry-built improvisation -- but, for
the moment, it held. The U.S. and the world looking back on 1946
might well and gratefully remember Jimmy Byrnes when many a
bigger man had been forgotten.

    How had he done it? How was it that the name of this small-
town lawyer and congressional cloakroom compromiser was known
with respect from the rag markets of Istanbul to the
chrysanthemum parterres of Osaka?

    The Cool of the Evening. In South Carolina, when the sun sets
and the day's work is done (but the strain of the day still
lingers in mind and muscle), when the restless dust starts to
settle back on the cotton fields, men gather on verandahs and
wharves to sit and talk while they watch the bullbats nervously
darting and swooping around the chimneys. Bourbon with water from
the branch is in order -- and low-voiced, scattered talk of high
politics. Such a talk Jimmy Byrnes calls a "bullbat session." He
loves them. In 1946 the bullbat session -- bourbon, branch water
and all -- became (like the green baize and champagne of another
day) an international diplomatic institution.

    At first Byrnes set too much store by the bullbat session. In
Moscow last December he had a long, informal chat with Joe
Stalin. Joe seemed to like Jimmy, and when Jimmy left he thought
he and Joe saw eye-to-eye on two points Jimmy had made: 1) the
Russians should easy on Persia, and 2) a 25-year treaty
guaranteeing the disarmament of Germany would be a good thing.

    When Jimmy got back to Washington, he found, in less amiable
sessions, a prevailing impression that the Russians had out-
bargained him on the atomic-control agreement. Before Byrnes left
for the January U.N. meeting in London, President Truman reminded
him that Vandenberg's support was necessary to make Byrnes's
policy stick with the Senate and the country. At the London
meeting Bevin still carried the ball for the West and Vandenberg
was still dissatisfied with Byrnes. In his report to the Senate
on the U.N. meeting, Vandenberg lavished praise on Bevin, Bidault
and others, pointedly omitted any reference to Byrnes. Vandenberg
than called on the U.S. vigorously to "sustain its own purposes
and ideals on all occasions as Russia does." Jimmy got the point;
at the same time Moscow's refusal to take its troops out of
Persia was beginning to convince Byrnes that dealing with Stalin
was not much different from dealing with Molotov.

    If Byrnes had continued to stand for patience with Russia
while Vandenberg stood for firmness, U.S. policy might have been
paralyzed by division. Instead the Senator from Michigan and the
ex-Senator from South Carolina (who understood each other well,
although there was no great affection between them) began to move
in converging lines. In April the Russians scornfully turned
their backs on Byrne's offer of a 25-year German disarmament
treaty. That completed Byrne's education; the bipartisan policy
of patience and firmness became the most important new factor in
world politics. Bevin was glad to slide gradually into a back
seat and let Byrnes, who represented the real power in the Anglo-
U.S. combination, do the talking for the West.

    History Goes "Quack, Quack." Through the summer, in bullbat
sessions and public meetings at the 21-nation Conference in
Paris, Byrnes talked well and vigorously. On one occasion he
cried: "I will sit here no more arguing whether the word should
be 'and' or 'but' . . . haggling over commas and semicolons. . .
." A New Zealand delegate, W.J. Jordan, was similarly annoyed. He
snapped: "I'm sick of listening to 'quack, quack, quack' hour
after hour."

    The Paris Conference proved that open covenants could not be
openly arrived at this side of eternity, because delegates spoke
for home consumption and would not make concessions in the open.
It also demonstrated some more important points: 1) that the West
could find propaganda answers to Russian propaganda; 2) that
Byrnes had been right in his insistence that the small nations be
heard, and 3) that Byrnes could be just as stubborn as Molotov.
The Paris Conference was boring, but it marked the turning of the
Russian tide. That "quack, quack" turned out to be the voice of
history.

    The U.S. public did not sense the meaning of Byrne's tireless
efforts until one August week when five U.S. Army flyers lay dead
in a tiny village in the Julian Alps, victims of Marshal Tito's
outdated confidence that the U.S. would look the other way.
Communist Tito had been a great war hero to the U.S.; overnight
he became the focus of U.S. wrath. Byrnes, sitting in a buzzing
Conference session at Paris, spent two hours writing Tito a note
that told him where he stood with a nation that had learned at
last that the price of peace could be too high.

    Recessional. Two weeks later Byrnes made his great Stuttgart
speech in which he recognized, as the Potsdam Pact had not, that
a healthy Germany was necessary for a reconstructed Europe. To
insure that a strong germany would not again dominate the
Continent, Byrnes made a solemn promise:

    "We thought [after the first World War] we could stay out of
Europe's wars and we lost interest in the affairs of Europe. That
did not keep us from being forced into a second World War. We
will not again make that mistake. We intend to continue our
interest in the affairs of Europe and of the world . . . ."

    Europe believed Byrnes. The great Russian recessional began.
As the year waned the Russian-stooge government in Azerbaijan
collapsed. Communist-sponsored candidates lost the Berlin
elections. Moscow reduced its German garrisons. Pressure on
Turkey eased. Europe began to breathe more easily.

    At the New York sessions of U.N. and the Foreign Ministers
the going got sticky again. Byrnes asked Molotov, who likes a
little bullbatting himself, up to his room in the Waldorf-
Astoria. Informally, the two began to make progress. When the
formal sessions ended, Byrnes had a deal on Trieste, Molotov had
agreed to discuss treaties with Germany and Austria, and the U.S.
resolution on disarmament had passed the U.N. Assembly.

    The Art of the Possible. Byrne's two chief helpers are
Charles E. ("Chip") Bohlen, a handsome, alert careerist who acts
as his Russian adviser-translator, and Benjamin V. ("Ben") Cohen,
once much the better half of F.D.R.'s (Thomas G.) Corcoran &
Cohen team. Cohen, an idealist, is classified in what Washington
calls the N.C.L. -- non-Communist left. Byrnes likes to recall
that he was an idealist once, himself. "In 1918 I was a follower
of Woodrow Wilson. I gloried in his idealism and in the
magnificent effort he made to build the peace upon the Covenant
of the League of Nations." But a lot of branch water has gone
into the bourbon since then. Jimmy may still have Wilsonian
visions; certainly, he can still recognize and use the
traditional U.S. political prinicples. But Jimmy, an intensely
practical man, is leading no crusades. He subscribes to the
doctrine that "politics is the art of the possible." He tries to
keep from getting behind or ahead of the parade.

    Byrnes has read little; he lacks the born statesman's
personal dignity. The other night at U.N. he pushed and elbowed
through the hat-check crowd for 15 minutes, while Bevin and
Molotov went out special exits after having their coats brought
to them.

    Impatient & Infirm. In short, Byrnes is a practical
politician with the limitations and assets of that breed. Among
the limitations is the habit of not making decisions until they
are forced upon him. While Byrnes has been saddled with
negotiations on Europe, no U.S. policy has been made in wide
areas of the world. The U.S. Palestine policy as enunciated by
Truman was mere mischievous vote-catching, as unrealistic in its
extreme pro-Zionism as the Grand Mufti's anti-Semitism. No one is
really making policy on Latin America. On China, a key piece in
the U.S. policy structure, John Carter Vincent, director of the
State Department's Far Eastern Division, last fortnight rushed
in to fill the vacuum left by Byrnes' absence; Vincent drafted
for Truman a statement which was, to say the least, impatient
toward Chiang Kai-shek and infirm in opposing the Reds.

    On the long overdue reorganization of the State Department
into an agency capable of handling the war-multiplied U.S.
responsibility in world affairs -- and capable of planning ahead
like Whitehall or the Kremlin -- Byrnes has scarcely turned a
wheel. (In the 546 days he has headed State, he has spent 305 in
Washington.) In 1939, when the war began, State operated on $16
million a year -- 2% of the Department of Agriculture's budget.
For 1947 State had $128 million -- a lot more money -- but little
more efficiency.

    On the asset side of having a politician as Secretary of
State in a time of crisis was Byrnes' handling of Henry Wallace's
stab-in-the-back. One French diplomat who has watched Byrnes for
a year made a point: "Never in our hearing did he utter a word of
criticism of either his President or of Wallace. That showed me
he was a loyal man -- but also, which is perhaps better -- that
he was a damn smart politician. Politician is a word which has
got a bad connotation in many parts of the world. But there is so
much ignorance, misunderstanding and even stupidity in the way
international affairs are handled that I sometimes think what the
world needs is more smart politicians -- especially if they are
loyal men too."

    Bigger & Better. On the whole, Jimmy had done well; he had
found that the way to get along with the Russians in
international conferences was to state U.S. principles and
policies clearly, and to stick to them; the Russians respected
that. But the rivalry between the U.S. and Russia was not
confined to the council table. It existed more importantly in the
real world of men & women for whose allegiance the two social
systems bid against one another.

    In the long run, for example, it would not be enough to stop
Russian political penetration in Persia; the full exercise of
U.S. leadership would require that the U.S. help the Persian
Government toward economic progress and political democracy for
the Persian people. Otherwise, many of them would be attracted
toward Communism, as they were last year. This problem existed
throughout the Middle East, over much of Europe, the whole Far
East and parts of Latin America. On its solution depended not
only the U.S. world position, but also the lasting peace which
the world sought so feverishly in 1946. That job was one for
future years; if Tinker Jimmy's dam held long enough, the U.S.
would seek in better years bigger men than Jimmy for a bigger
task.