Assistant President

On March 15, after the Lend-Lease Act had been passed, the President broadcast to the country: "The great task of this day, the deep duty which rests upon us is to move products from the assembly lines of our factories to the battle lines of democracy--now!"

Last week he formally placed Harry Hopkins in charge of "the great task." The move was purely formal, having been indicated for many weeks (TIME, March 10), but only then did conservatives wake up to the fact that Harry Lloyd Hopkins, harness maker's son from Grinnell, Iowa, had become, in effect, Assistant President of the U.S. The tall, bony, sagacious welfare worker got a job the Senate need not be asked to confirm; the President told the press that his best friend would have no powers, only duties; and Hopkins turned down a salary for this work.

Hopkins' job: executive secretary of the War Cabinet (Secretaries of State, War, Navy and Treasury), which will administer the Lend-Lease Act and spend its $7,000,000,000. Actually the frail Iowan will still be only officially what he has long been unofficially: right-hand man to Franklin Roosevelt.

With Washington the capital of the democratic world, Hopkins' job is the second biggest in the Government. Since he can work only six to seven hours a day, his task will be chiefly to suggest, plan, iron out, foresee, confer. Actual physical chores will be handled by a four-man staff:

Oscar Cox, big, husky, wide-mouthed Treasury lawyer, with thick black hair framing a craggy Lincolnian face, who helped draft the Lend-Lease Act, will manage the enormous legal burden involved in British orders. Philip Young, son of General Electric's retired Owen D. (for nothing) Young, suave, polite, tweedy, pipe-puffing, also an ex-Treasury lawyer, will work with Cox, chubby J. C. Buckley, and blond, balding Alex Landgraf in planning, procuring, supervising production, shipment, whatever. These four, all 100% New Dealers, all young, tough-minded, aggressive, will be the Hopkins crew of odd-job men, sword-bearers, idea-factories, and intellectual bravos. They will work directly with the Navy's Paymaster, Rear Admiral Ray Spear, a grizzled seadog, and the Army's Major General James H. Burns, veteran War Department executive.

The Office for Emergency Management (an alias for two men, Franklin Roosevelt and his "anonymous" assistant, William H. McReynolds) became the superbody of defense administration. Immediately under it is the Hopkins group, plus the War Cabinet. OEM's physical workshop was the Knudsen-Hillman OPM. The defense program's setup had been reshuffled once more--and, the U.S. hoped, for the last time. Something more than promises must be given Great Britain--and soon. Yet OPM's William Knudsen blandly told the Senate committee investigating defense: "I don't know [whether we could supply the whole world with armaments] but we can take on any two of them after we get started." The catch was in those dreary words: "after we get started."

In 17 hastily cleared rooms in the magnificent white marble surroundings of the Federal Reserve Building, Harry Hopkins and his staff of 35 men settled down to spend $7,000.000,000, re-arm the democracies, and stop Hitler. In late 1938, when Hopkins' WPA was wrenched by charges of waste, political corruption and Communism, Franklin Roosevelt had rung the bell, dragged Hopkins to a neutral corner, saved him from an angry Senate. Now, as the bells tolled for whole democracies, Hopkins had been sent again into the fight, armed with the $7,000,000,000 and the complete trust of the President.

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