Line-Up

After seven years in the War Department, the last 22 months as efficient, plodding, meticulous Secretary of War, Robert P. Patterson last week handed in his resignation. Ever since the war ended, he had wanted to return to his private law practice in Manhattan. He nursed the hope that he might be appointed to fill the next Supreme Court vacancy. His cue to resign, said Bob Patterson, was Congress' all-but-final action last week on the merger bill which he had helped put through. The bill, passed by the House, went to a Senate-House conference this week for a final ironing.

The bill would not merge all U.S. fighting arms into a single fighting service, as Patterson had originally hoped. But it would coordinate the equal departments of Army, Navy and the new, autonomous Air Forces under a single, Cabinet-rank Secretary of National Security* (TIME, Jan. 27). The Navy would keep control of its own air forces (roughly parallel to Britain's Fleet Air Arm); the Marine Corps would keep its traditional alliance with the Navy. It was victory enough for Bob Patterson.

His departure made it almost certain that Harry Truman would pick for the new Cabinet post an early foe of unification who had changed his mind last winter, when the Army withdrew its insistence on a single military commander. The man: Navy Secretary James Forrestal. The best bets to fill two of the new subordinate secretaryships: for Air, Yaleman W. Stuart Symington, now Assistant Secretary of War for Air, socialite, industrialist and son-in-law of New York's military-wise Congressman James W. Wadsworth; for Navy, handsome Under Secretary John L. Sullivan, New Hampshire lawyer and faithful Democrat, who got his Washington start in the Bureau of Internal Revenue.

To fill out Patterson's job and possibly to continue in the subordinate Army post after merger becomes a fact, the President nominated able, even-tempered, 6 ft. 5 in. Under Secretary Kenneth C. Royall. A former $50,000-a-year trial lawyer in Goldsboro, N.C., Royall had reluctantly abandoned his independent, easygoing life soon after World War II began, to accept a colonelcy in the Army Service Force's Legal Section.

He had perked up a little when the President appointed him to the exciting, if unsympathetic, job of defending eight German saboteurs (TIME, July 20, 1942). He had perked up more when he got a brigadier general's star. In October 1945, he was pleased to be named Under Secretary, although he yearned for North Carolina. Charged chiefly with procurement, Royall did such a good job that he was marked as Patterson's successor.

At week's end, even the sudden rediscovery by the press that Royall is a brother-in-law of Johannes Steel, pro-Communist radio and news commentator (who married Royall's half-sister), did not delay the Senate's action on his name. Within 24 hours after his nomination reached the Hill, the Senate had confirmed his appointment.

* In the House bill, called Secretary of Defense.

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