MR HAROLD ICKES

Otago Daily Times, Issue 26078, 15 February 1946, Page 5

MR HAROLD ICKES

RESIGNATION ACCEPTED OPPOSITION TO PRESIDENT WASHINGTON, Feb. 13. President Truman has accepted the resignation of Mr Harold Ickes as Secretary of the Interior and has designated Mr Oscar L. Chapman, Acting Secretary, until Mr Ickes’s successor is appointed. Mr Chapman has been Assistant Secretary for the Interior for 13 years. The Associated Press says the resignation of the self-styled “ old curmudgeon,” who took office with President Roosevelt in 1933, sprang from

Mr Ickes’s opposition to President Truman’s nomination of Mr Edwin W. Pauley, the Californian oilman, as Under-secretary of the Navy. Mr Ickes asked to be relieved on March 31, but President Truman made his resignation effective from February 15. The President’s letter accepting the resignation has not been published, but Mr Ickes’s letter to him said: “ I cannot accept the theory that I should have told the Senate’s Naval Affairs Committee less than the truth. I do not apologise for this, although I regretted the unhappy personal position in which involuntarily I found myself.” Mr Ickes stated in evidence before the Senate Committee that Mr Pauley told him in September, 1944/ that a Government suit for the Federal title to submerged coastal oil lands would be bad politics, as it would cost the Democratic Party 300,000 dollars in campaign contributions from the Californian oil men. Mr Ickes told the committee this was the rawest proposition he had ever had; nevertheless President Truman again backed up Mr Pauley, telling a news conference that Mr Pauley was honest and Mr Ickes could be mistaken. Mr Ickes’s letter to President Truman added: “ I cannot stay on when you, in effect, have expressed lack of confidence in me.”