Mr. Hull As Joshua

In the two months after Pearl Harbor, good, grey Cordell Hull grew greyer and paler. He had played a role like Joshua's, trying to make the Rising Sun stand still. He had fought a desperate delaying action, talking endlessly with the wily Japanese envoys, straining every one of his tough but ancient fibers to postpone a day that he knew must inevitably come. The campaign wore out 70-year-old Mr. Hull. Weakened by colds and grippe, nerve-shot, the Secretary of State went to Florida in February, to rest in the sun.

Last week he was back at his desk in Washington, tanned and heavier, calm and cheerful. Relaxed in his big black chair, Mr. Hull had the air of a man whose vindication was sure.

In retrospect, the job he had tried to do seemed fantastic. To maintain the basic U.S. position, he had to insist that Japan get out of China and stay out of the East Indies, but he had no big stick. The Army & Navy wanted soft talk, to give them more time. So did the British, the Dutch. Mr. Hull could not explain to the U.S. public that oil and scrap iron shipped to Japan were not meant to purchase peace but to buy time. His position was made torture by public clamor for a "strong stand" and by Chinese pressure for vigorous action.

Pearl Harbor came as a disappointment to Mr. Hull, not as a surprise. Pearl Harbor baffled him--not the raid, but the somnolence of the U.S. commanders in the face of his repeated warnings.

When he went away, Statesman Hull was troubled about the U.S. connection with Vichyfrance. The White House had silently concurred in the maintenance of relations with Vichy, but it was the State Department which had to take the lumps for truckling to minions of Hitler. Mr. Hull never dreamed that he could shore up Vichy against Hitler indefinitely. It was another Joshua policy. He may have kept the French fleet French for a year and a half. Certainly his policy set up a watchtower in the heart of Europe.

Pierre Laval's actual plop into power took Mr. Hull unawares, as it did everyone else in the State Department. But the air was cleared. Now the Vichy sore spots--Dakar, Madagascar, Martinique, North Africa--were almost beyond the reach of diplomatic medication, would if necessary have to be dealt with by the sharp war instruments of the United Nations.

With global war taking more territory every day out of the diplomatic province, Mr. Hull was content for the State Department to fill henceforth what he called last week "a minor role." However, there was still work to do--in Latin America, for example, on top of fine work already done. And Finland--well, Finland would have to be told again to stop fighting Russia or face a U.S. declaration of war.

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