THE CHAMP LEAVES A CHALLENGE

...Rather, he is one of those com-paratively ordinary guys of whom America is made...

...Perhaps—just perhaps— it will be a good thing, a healthy thing, and in some deep sense a far more democratic thing that the show will have to be handled, from here on in, by a bunch of comparatively ordinary guys working at it together...

...We need a Secretary of War who can do a full day's work, and who does not squander his slender energies on essentially civilian matters such as trying to bull through a labor draft...

...We can hope, too, that he will grasp the tremendous opportunity given to him to build for the nation a good team of ordinary guys working together—a team good enough to surpass that essentially weak team of ours which was made great only by the presence on it of one extraordinary star...

...The Champ Leaves A Challenge By FRED RODELL IT will not, I trust, be taken as an insult to the memory of Franklin Roosevelt—and certainly it is not so intended—to remark that his tragic death may not have been, for this nation, an altogether unmitigated misfortune...

...From the Cabinet on down, the key question, of course, is the kind of men he picks to replace them...

...But we need something more than a gracious smile as Secretary of State...

...We can hope that, as President, Harry Truman, faced with a clear-cut issue of policy or personnel, will show the same sturdy independence of his self-seeking old friends—in Missouri politics, in the Senate, or elsewhere—that he showed of Administration bigwigs when he was running the war investigation that bore his name...

...It is to carry on still better without him—and so truly prove the strength and the imperishability of American democracy...

...Franklin Roosevelt could—and did, particularly in the later years—stuff his Cabinet and his Administration with conservatives and weaklings, with figure-heads and fools...

...Ickes and Wallace, at least—both of whom, significantly, came in in 1933—have earned the right to stay...

...I can remember, almost 5 years ago, expressing to some of my liberal friends my disturbance at the appointment of that aging domestic reactionary, Henry L. Stimson, to be Secretary of War...

...Nor only the Cabinet...

...Don't worry," I was assured...

...For the greatest tribute that the nation and its new President can pay to the memory of Franklin Roosevelt is not to carry on as well without him, now that he is gone...

...But this is a democracy...

...Truman's Great Opportunity The old master is no longer around to pull the strings...

...It is giving away no secret to report that Harry Truman is not a strong man...

...betrayed the extent to which this country had come to depend upon one man...

...they should be guys with a drive that is sparked by more than selfish personal ambition ; they should be guys with intelligence and vision—which are synonymous...

...But Truman, too, could choose his inner circle badly...

...But they should be guys, above all, with integrity and courage—the two qualities most pitifully lacking in most of official Washington today...

...And if men, ordinary men, cannot be found who combine these qualities, then this nation is in a sorry state indeed...

...What Truman has the chance to do—what, in truth, he must do—is to build himself a brand-new team...

...But a test of both his vision and his courage will confront him shortly...

...As such, he will never want—nor would he be able—to run the show himself as Franklin D. Roosevelt did...

...For F.D.R...

...If, for instance, he should lean on the advice of ruthless Robert Hannegan, the Pendergast politician who "made" Truman Vice-President—and so, President—a Missouri gang to rival the old Ohio gang of Warren Harding might take over the affairs of the nation...

...Forrestal, who got his job in much the same manner as Truman got his---instead of being picked primarily for malleability or for show—might be added to the list...

...filled them...

...The very sense of a loss not merely profound but utterly irreplaceable, the sick sensation of something very akin to helplessness, which beset millions of Americans when they learned that the bell had tolled for F.D.R...

...bequeathed his successor an Administration loaded with deadwood, rotten wood, and dummies...

...They need only be, once more, comparatively ordinary guys...

...and the State Department might well be cleaned out a bit, or a lot, farther down...

...So might Biddle, who only lately has asserted his independence both of the White House and of Felix Frankfurter who used to give him orders (though Biddle, in fact, is almost certain to go...

...McKellar—it would not augur well for the other appointments he will be making before long...

...We need a Secretary of the Treasury with a few more qualifications than the fact that he has long been his President's personal friend...

...Not that every single old face should disappear...

...is his own Secretary of State...

...Don't worry," said my friends...

...to the bosses at Chicago last Summer and so clinched the nomination of Truman who now scares him to shivers—the nation will lose little...

...The brand of replacements and appointments that President Truman makes will, in turn, depend in large part on the brand of intimate and unofficial advisers with whom he surrounds himself...

...And still the show must go on...

...I can remember, far more recently, exploding my dismay at the appointment of that amiable incompetent, Edward R. Stettinius, to be Secretary of State...

...It was as though the Executive branch of the United States Government had been nothing but a troupe of marionettes with the old master pulling the strings...

...He is likely to pick his team solidly, unimaginatively, and fairly well...

...is his own Secretary of War...

...F.D.R...

...And therein lies his great opportunity...

...The Greatest Tribute We can hope...

...And so it went...

...Choosing The Inner Circle They need not be super-men, even if such were to be found...

...Perhaps the nation as a whole, the nation as a nation, will gain an inch or two in stature, now that it can no longer lean on the strong arm of one strong man...

...The Cabinet, man for man, is one of the weakest in our history...

...If he should balk at re-appointing David Lilienthal, one of the 2 or 3 ablest administrators the New Deal ever produced, to the chairmanship of the TVA—if he should be cowed by the poisonous opposition of that ponderous old polltaxer, Sen...

...And we need a Secretary of Labor who has, at least, the respect of labor, and, if possible, of industry as well...

...From Harry Hopkins—who, for all his brilliance and loyalty, was so jealous of his personal position that he never once permitted the President to appoint a strong man to a position of power in the Administration—through the fawning Felix Frankfurter with his far-flung circle of equally obsequious acolytes, on to slippery Sidney Hillman— who sold out his P.A.C...

...Yet most folk, especially leftwing folk, felt strangely secure...

...Throughout the sprawling executive branch of our wartime civilian government, in high places and low, are menial or venal men whom President Truman would be wise to replace...

...F.D.R...

...The President himself could be trusted, and the President would run the show...

...Truman, for all his penchant for political loyalty, is probably not so stupid...

...Perhaps the most obvious and immediate crumb of comfort the nation can garner from F.D.R.'s death is the cleaning of the old Palace Guard out of the White House...

...He senses both the size of his job and his own inadequacy to fill F.D.R.'s shoes in the way F.D.R...