Strong Arm

(See Cover)

At war this week in the Atlantic and Caribbean (see map) are 134 ships, 600 planes, 3,210 officers and 49,445 men of the U. S. Navy. For the purposes of diplomacy, the U. S. Navy's first full maneuvers in the Atlantic since 1934 are described as Fleet Problem XX.

Problem XX is more than a fame. Never before, not even when the Navy cavorted in Japan's back yard last year, has the U. S. so frankly marshaled its sea power to deal with specific foes (Germany, Italy) as they would line up in a specific situation. For the armed forces of the U. S. now have something to do besides wait for a war to be declared. To forestall that event, Commander-in-Chief Franklin Roosevelt has put ships and planes to use in world politics--the "power politics" that up to now has been played only by the Europeans.

Neither naval nor military authorities in the U. S. believe Europe's totalitarian toughies would risk transatlantic invasion. But it is the Navy's job to remind them of the risk. According to latest reports published by the U. S. Navy Department (November 1938), a combined Italo-German fleet would outnumber the U. S. only in destroyers and submarines.

For practice the Navy therefore gave a slight edge to Vice Admiral Adolphus Andrews' defending "Blacks" as they steamed to sea in cruise formation (standard with all navies) to protect the vital Panama Canal from salty Vice Admiral E. C. ("Old Man") Kalbfus' attacking "Whites."

Men-o'-War. Three men know all about what both sides are doing. One is Admiral Claude Charles Bloch, a country boy from Kentucky who made good as Commander-in-Chief of the U. S. Fleet, and is chief umpire in the Navy game. Another is one time Assistant Secretary of the Navy Franklin Roosevelt, to whom the cruiser Houston was assigned so that he could rove through the battle area, keeping tabs by radio.

The third omniscient remained in the bare, concrete barrack on Washington's Constitution Avenue where naval command is centred. To Navy men, Admiral William Daniel Leahy is the Navy. As Chief of Naval Operations, he is a one-man counterpart of the Army's General Staff, wielding a vast authority vested in his office by cumulative custom rather than by statute. To that grey and modest gentleman, who normally retires next June, the most important man in the U. S. Navy is Franklin Roosevelt. Because the President has made it so, an important area in the Navy's world just now is South America. A very present possibility for the Navy is revolution inspired by European totalitarians and therefore, by the terms of Franklin Roosevelt's hemisphere defense, to be prevented or suppressed by U. S. arms. In Navy thinking, most likely spot for such a police job is Brazil, whose Foreign Minister Oswaldo Aranha last week assured the U. S. that it need not (and should not) worry about his country (see p. g).

Naval preoccupation with South America is historic. The Monroe Doctrine has ever been a handy reason for a Big Navy. But the Navy's traditional reason for existence has long been Japan and its threat to U. S. possessions and trade in the Pacific. Japan outnumbers the U. S. in some ship categories, particularly submarines. Leahy & Co. do not worry greatly about this, having small respect for Japanese numbers. By U. S. standards, the Japanese have yet to learn to build efficient surface ships, tend to overload them with disastrously topheavy armor and guns.

One Against Bugs. William Leahy says all the U. S. has to do to keep on good naval footing is to maintain its Navy at its present relative standing in battleships and aircraft carriers, continue its cruiser and destroyer construction program, sharply accelerate its aircraft and submarine program, step up its aircraft procurement to 500 planes per year. Object: to stay just behind Great Britain in heavy categories, come well up with the authoritarians in lighter ships. The job of building ships is therefore highly important to the U. S. Navy, equally important to the U. S. citizens who must pay the bills now or later. This job belongs to Charles Edison, eldest son of the late Thomas Edison's second marriage and Assistant Secretary of the U. S. Navy.

The death in 1936 of Assistant Secretary Henry Latrobe Roosevelt (fourth of the blood to hold the office) enabled Franklin Roosevelt to put Charles Edison on the job. Recent naval history made it a formidable task. Post-War reaction against armaments in 1922 led the U. S. into the Washington (naval limitation) Treaty and a long naval sleep. Sailor Roosevelt woke up the country with a bang in 1933, dumped PWA funds into an emergency program, followed up with regular appropriations as soon as Depression I began to lift, has not let up during Depression II. On its Navy the U. S. has spent $2,742,000,000 since 1933, is asked to appropriate $785,987,000 more for the coming fiscal year.

"Bugs" galore harassed the hurry-up ships built with PWA money, were still plaguing the Navy in 1936. For speed and efficiency in an essentially industrial enterprise, Franklin Roosevelt needed a man who believed in a Big Navy, who understood manufacturing, who also believed in the New Deal and who had no ingrained reverence for gold braid. All these qualities he found in Charles Edison.

Forty-eight now, Charles Edison has often said that he was born with two strikes called. The late (1931), great Thomas Alva Edison was a genius, but a genius can be a hard father to grow up with. Gifted with none of his father's inventive fire, blessed with a great appreciation for the important trivia of living, young Charles Edison spread his share of wild oats around Llewellyn Park, N. J., where the family reigned in feudal quietude. Not until he had labored through Massachusetts Institute of Technology and settled down in the business end of the loosely joined "Edison Industries" did Charles Edison get along really well with Thomas Edison. As Charles gradually took over the management from his father, he completely reorganized Thomas A. Edison, Inc. Now the son takes pride in the prosperous business.*

Depression I pulled him into public service (State Relief, NRA, NEC, Housing). A Republican by family precept, he had long been a friend of Franklin Roosevelt's Uncle Frederic Delano, in the early New Deal years came to know and admire the President. So he was not astounded when onetime NEC Director Frank Walker met him in the lobby of Washington's Hotel Mayflower shortly after the 1936 elections, suggested he visit the White House next day. He was sworn in as Assistant Secretary Jan. 18, 1937.

Charles Edison thereupon found himself not only on a tough job but in a curious personal relationship with other Navy rankers. By statute and regulation the Assistant Secretary has under him the Navy's "shore establishments" (Yards & Docks; Engineering; Construction & Repair; Supplies & Accounts). He also has much to do with the Bureaus of Aeronautics (planes) and Ordnance (guns). But he -is exclusively responsible for none of these; the Chief of Naval Operations is also interested. And over both is the Secretary of the Navy. But he is exclusively responsible for none of these; the Chief of Naval Operations is also interested. And nominally over both is aging (76), ailing Secretary of the Navy Claude Augustus Swanson. But as often as not these days, Charles Edison is Acting Secretary of the Navy.

Civilian penetration of naval and military affairs has so far raised less dust around the Navy Building than in the War Department. Big Navies are of necessity non-isolationist, and the U. S. Big Navy was already being made to order when Franklin Roosevelt began to do over U. S. foreign policy. The Army's Chief of Staff Malin Craig is an isolationist of the first water, genuinely believes the U. S. Army should be fitted to the minimum necessities of simple defense. Charles Edison's good friend, Assistant Secretary of War Louis Arthur Johnson, has the job of expanding it to a larger Roosevelt pattern, hence is in conflict with General Craig and Secretary of War Woodring, whom Mr. Johnson still hopes to replace.

On the Ways. If Charles Edison has a comparable ambition, it waits on time and infirmity. On the best of terms with their Assistant Secretary, Leahy & Admirals prefer to remain that way by keeping him strictly ashore, well out of naval planning and operation. His awakening interest in such matters as the Navy's troublesome promotion system, its mountainous red tape, its broadening spheres in the Atlantic and Pacific, have caused hardly a ripple in the "Annapolis Club" of naval officialdom.

Fact is that as Coordinator of Shipbuilding (by Presidential designation) Mr. Secretary Edison has his hands pretty full, has by no means convinced all Navy men that he can lick his job. "I don't know the front of a ship from the back," he ejaculated to his civilian assistant and Man Friday, Lewis Compton, when he first took the job. But he did know business and manufacturing. Presently abuilding or appropriated for are six battleships, two aircraft carriers, seven cruisers, 39 destroyers, 16 submarines. Two 45,000-ton battleships, biggest in U. S. naval history, are included in the 1939-40 fiscal program. Under existing Congressional authorizations and treaties, the U. S. by 1946 may lay down keels to replace all its 15 battleships. Thus by 1951 it could have a first line fleet of 15 modern battleships, a second line of perhaps ten older but serviceable ones.

The Navy does not propose to scare taxpayers by saying what that maximum program would cost (at around $70,000,000 per battleship, corresponding amounts for the necessary complements of smaller vessels). On a lesser program based upon eight new battleships the Navy Department figures it must spend for construction, armament & ammunition $270,000,000 in 1940; $370,489,000 in 1941; $271,075,000 in 1942, $366,542,000 more by 1946. Charles Edison believes that it is money well spent. Says he: "If this Navy--this strong right arm of ours--is obviously strong, the folly of testing it is equally obvious."

Thanks partly to Charles Edison, partly to Rear Admiral Harold Gardiner Bowen who originally sponsored the idea in the Navy, the new ships will be powered with high-pressure, high-temperature steam (600 Ibs. per sq. in., 850DEG superheat). Upon the success of those installations, replacing old-style low-pressure, low-temperature power plants, largely depends Charles Edison's reputation in naval annals. Navy traditionalists still insist that ships subject to marine wear & tear can't stand the resultant strains, cite such recent examples as the disclosure that trouble with high-pressure turbines will delay completion of 18 destroyers in the Benham class. Charles Edison also went to the mat with Admiral Leahy and Rear Admiral Arthur B. Cook, Chief of the Bureau of Aeronautics, succeeded in reviving naval experiments with lighter-than-air ships (TIME, Nov. 14). Just now he is trying to find a way out of the detail that clogs his days. Not long ago he stacked up one day's accumulation of papers to be signed, found the pile four inches higher than his desk.

A slightly vagrant temperament helps him out, so well in fact that clock-conscious naval officers sometimes complain amongst themselves. Charles Edison refuses to salute the clock, manages to find time for his favorite recreations: roulette (for "interesting" stakes), deep-sea fishing, a monthly visit to New Jersey, improvised composition of music and doggerel. An Edison verse (written during a stay at Naval Hospital last year):

"They hitch up wires to your leg, And arm and back and chest To see how goes the pump today And if you need a rest.

They do a lot of other things, Indelicate to tell 'Til you begin to speculate, 'God! Was I ever well?' "

Never robustly well, Charles Edison has his father's deafness, only recently was persuaded to use a hearing device (not of Edison make) at formal conferences. He and smart, fortyish Mrs. Edison have no children. In Washington they live in quiet comfort at the Hay-Adams House, still keep their 24-room home in Llewellyn Park. Neither can get away from the Navy for long, and neither wants to. Charles Edison indeed out-navies the Navy in some matters. He even follows naval precedence in getting last into his car, as ranking officers step last into a boat. Four or five of the Edison evenings each week are devoted to naval parties, where the Assistant Secretary ordinarily does his social share. Just now, he says, he's on the wagon.

*Some Edison money comes from sales to Government departments including the Navy. When Charles Edison took office, he forbade salesmen for Thomas A. Edison, Inc. to use his name in Government dealings.

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