Word: hull
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...book are two able Hoosiers (one a Republican, the other a Democrat), both veteran New York and Washington journalists, both familiar with Europe at first hand. In 332 highly readable pages they reach two extremely important conclusions: 1) "idealism, consistency and strength" have characterized the foreign policy of Roosevelt, Hull and Sumner Welles in the past three years; 2) together with Britain, the U.S. has laid down firmly "a pattern of post-war aspirations and behavior" which should result in a fair and decent peace...
...cheeky to call such a book a "white paper." But these days Washington is a breezy hub of the world, where cuss words, flippancy and wisecracks distinguish the august and the great. The Secretary of State lisps, and therefore says "Jesus Kwyst!," report Davis & Lindley, whose admiration for Cordell Hull's profanity and cracker-box yarns about mules, shirttails and barnyard fowl is right in the Washington groove...
...Judge Hull, for example, compares the plight of the U.S. with a one-ocean navy to the embarrassment of a man with a shirt so short that when he pulls it down in front it exposes him behind, and vice versa. It was in a White House bathroom, the authors note gleefully, that Prime Minister Winston Churchill was sold the phrase "United Nations" by President Roosevelt. The President had fixed on it in bed before breakfast, shouted it through the bathroom door. The two biggest guns of democracy are now on such good terms that they can "say anything...
...Hull calls the Japanese war party "Dillinger" for short. He has the "prevision of a frontiersman" and his "prudent judgments" are the obverse, in State Department coin, of the President's driving self -confidence. Mr. Roosevelt kicked over the traces with his undiplomatic dagger-in-the-back reference to Mussolini. But "18th-Century" Sumner Welles, who was vexed about the dagger, is "erroneously regarded by left-wing intellectuals in this country as a 'reactionary' force in foreign policy." Davis & Lindley prove their point by revealing that while U.S. relations with the Soviet Union were at their worst...
...does not make war. Attorney General Francis Biddle, the libertarian lawyer, gets close to the war only when his Justice Department prosecutes spies and saboteurs. Secretary of Commerce Jesse Jones, once the moneybags of the war effort, had his wings clipped after the Rubber Scandal. Secretary of State Cordell Hull is still the good, grey man of international diplomacy, but the day of grey diplomacy has faded with Pearl Harbor. Secretary of Agriculture Claude Wickard is close to the war effort, with his responsibility for feeding the United Nations, but not quite...