WASHINGTON’S F.O.

Grey River Argus, 10 June 1943, Page 7

WASHINGTON’S F.O.

■ ’ NEW YORK. Some time ago the Standard Oil Company of New Jersey asked the State Department for permission to sell aviation gasoline to an air-line running from Brazil to Italy. Now if it had asked ten people on the street instead, like an inquiring reporter, nine' of them would have said “No.” If it had asked a corner’s jury, or a Rotary lunch meeting or the New York Yankees or the window cleaners’ union or the boys in the back room, they would all have said No. The State Department said “Yes.”

’This Department has almost always said “Yes” in similar circumstances. Whether the question has been selling oil to Japan, or kicking the Free French out of St. Pierre, or letting the Japanese have Americandesigned aeroplane engines, or sending supplies to French North Africa, the word has been “Yes 1 Yes! Yes!

But on almost all of these questions the people of the United States, if asked, would have said “No! No! No!” They would have hit the ceiling every time. The State Department never hits the ceiling, though it has sat through a decade of such horror that the sound of heads against ceilings should have been a continuous thumping noise, like riveting.

And so (painfully conscious of the dangers of criticisng public officials in war time) I make the temperate suggestion that the State Department should be staffed by men who have, by and large, the same reactions to the same events as do the majority of Americans. What makes us furious should make it furious. That is not asking for disunity, but unity.