Toward a United Command

The fact that the Constitution places the command of the U.S. Armed Forces in the White House was no deterrent: U.S. citizens still clamored for a unified command of Army & Navy, demanded that there should be a military man at the top. This week Franklin D. Roosevelt entered formal recognition of an obvious need. He appointed a Chief of Staff to take some of the burden of high command off his hands.

He did not choose the man suggested by the U.S.'s First Citizen Without Portfolio, Wendell Willkie. Willkie's choice (and probably the people's) was Douglas MacArthur. The President preferred to let the General stay out in Australia. His choice was a famed Navy man: grizzled, 67-year-old Admiral William Daniel Leahy (TIME, July 6), who had resigned only two days before as the U.S. Ambassador to Vichy.

But neither Citizen Willkie nor Army nor Navy were likely to cavil. They had gained an important point and a good man. Admiral Leahy, lean and still as sharp of mind and tongue as when he walked the quarterdeck, is a thorough going professional at warfare. As a naval officer he had spent 22 of his 46 years of service at sea, had commanded the battle force of the U.S. Fleet, worked in the top ranks of its high command and finally became Chief of Naval Operations. His new appointment had been foreshadowed (TIME, July 6).

Unanswered Question. When Admiral Leahy was ready for retirement in 1939, Franklin Roosevelt decided he was too good a horse to turn out to pasture, made him Governor of Puerto Rico, then pulled him out for the U.S.'s toughest diplomatic mission: emissary to Vichyfrance. As Chief of Staff to the Commander in Chief, Seadog Leahy will need diplomacy. Working directly with and under the President, he will be over the Army's Chief of Staff General George C. Marshall and the Navy's COMINCH Admiral Ernest Joseph King. But whether Leahy would be a real boss, or a glorified errand boy and transmission agency for the Commander in Chief, still lay with a President who is slow to delegate important responsibilities.

Military men could comfort themselves with one thought: on his record, Admiral Leahy did not seem likely to fit into a White House pigeonhole. Navy men who knew him well were sure he would not have taken the job without an understanding with his Commander in Chief that he was to be no mere military adviser. And his appointment would immediately have one important effect: the services would hear less of military strategy from Sociologist Harry Hopkins.

The Job to Do. If Admiral Leahy gets the power that his title implies, he will have a tremendous job: he will frame strategic plans with the President, direct their execution, tie the military war effort of the U.S. into a coordinated whole, gear it with the grand plans of the United Nations. He will also have to put Army & Navy in their proper psychological relations to each other.

The problem of joint command in strategic areas is one which Chief of Staff Leahy may help to settle. Wherever he finds Army & Navy serving together, service jealousies will have to be stamped out and the authority of commanders redefined. In the Canal Zone, the Navy will have to fit itself into the command of Lieut. General Frank Maxwell Andrews, just as in Hawaii the Army has worked in the harness of Admiral Chester Nimitz.

Military and naval men knew that all this had to be done, hoped devoutly that Admiral Leahy now had the will and energy to do it. For they knew that only when the U.S. has settled its inner differences can it hope to work effectively for a high command among the United Nations.

The cry for a generalissimo has already been raised. But only after much adjustment in the high command of the U.S.--and of Britain--can it be heeded.

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