Word: patterson
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...Government's original spokesman was stiff, judicial Under Secretary of War Robert Patterson. Judge Patterson wanted authority for the Administration to deal with strike-bound plants, with recalcitrant employers. He wanted authority to get the specifications and designs for an improved weapon whose owners were asking (by War Department estimates) 100% more than the cost of its production...
Under existing law, the Army has taken over a locomotive crane, blueprints of a device for converting 1903 rifles into semiautomatics, a number of lathes, a 25-gallon copper still. But nobody was more upset than single-minded Judge Patterson at the outcry that under the "draft property" act the Administration could "take a man's watch or stifle the freedom of the press." Said he in surprise: "No such things were ever contemplated." But when he canvassed for support outside Congress, he ran into the same fear...
Last week Judge Patterson offered a modified bill. Its terms limit the requisitioning power to "any military or naval equipment or munitions, or component parts thereof, or machinery, tools, or materials necessary to manufacture of such equipment or munitions." Congress was still sore about the whole subject, but it was willing to listen...
Last week, with a foresight rare in U.S. military history, the army prepared to apply the awful test of war to U.S. officers before they actually go to battle. Said Under Secretary of War Robert Porter Patterson (in a letter to House Speaker Sam Rayburn): "It is imperative that during the emergency the Secretary of War have authority to vitalize the active list of the Army, removing therefrom those officers who are unable to stand up under the strain to which they must be subjected if we are to build up a modern Army capable of meeting the demands...
Although Mr. Patterson wrote his letter on behalf of Secretary of War Stimson, the man behind this intelligent ruthlessness was the Army's kindly Chief of Staff, General George C. Marshall. Since the U.S. technically was still short of war, his test had to be short of war, too. But its application could be as remorseless and effective as he and his assistants chose to make...