WASHINGTON AT WAR
By D. W. BROGAN
WHEN I first saw Washington in the golden days of Calvin Coolidge, the Plaza that stretches from the Union Station to the Capitol was encumbered with odd two-storied grey buildings that a few years before had housed war-workers in the then late,
great world war, which now seems but a dress rehearsal. The United States is again at war, and Washington is again having its abundant open spaces filled with temporary buildings, offices, store-rooms, dormitories. Vast as was the expansion of Government building in Washington under President Hoover and President Roosevelt, immense as are the new Government buildings that now lour in their solemn Graeco-Roman dignity, vigorous as has been the policy that has evacuated non-belligerent Government offices to Richmond, Indianapolis, even to Philadelphia, Washington is packed. A great corpus of legend has grown up around the new national comic figure, the business man summoned to Washington, looking hopefully but fruitlessly for a place to lay his head, with all the intensity of a homeless erring daughter in a melodrama.
The legend is only one example of the momentous fact ; the capital of the United States is news again. Its life is of the greatest interest to the average citizen, who normally pays little but tourist attention to it. From it come forth orders and appeals ; its decisions affect life and happiness all over the United States. So "what is Washington?" is asked by millions of Americans, and ought to be asked by some of us, for decisions Made there are of the greatest interest in London as well as in Des Moines or Abilene, and evIlti less is known in London than in that great hinterland that stretches west from Washington to the Golden Gate.
The demand for news of Washington to make comprehensible much of the news out of Washington, has been met by an admirable survey that has had great and deserved success in America.* Mr. Kiplinger has long been known as the editor of the most famous confidential " news-letter " that comes out of Washington, and much of the merit of his book comes from his wide knowledge of the official, semi-official and quite unofficial sources of information available to the news-hound in Washington. Always on the hunt for news, men like Mr. Kiplinger or the great columnists acquire a bird-dog nose for a story that sometimes startles the unwary. But the main merit of this book is not its stories, but its sober though entertaining presentation of Washington as an instrument of govern- ment, the permanent, ever more important Washington story, the story of how that strange city, in the last twenty years, has become a real, and then the real, capital.
In the golden days of Coolidge, New York was the real capital ; if it was true that "the business of the United States is business," this was bound to be so. Some important things were done in Washington, much sentimental prestige had accrued to the White House and even to the Capitol. In Mr. Andrew Mellon, what may
* Washington is Like That. By W. M. Kiplinger. (Harpers.)
be called the provincial business man had his viceroy in office in the Treasury. But Mr. Mellon was so very rich that he was not just a PittsBurgh millionaire, and the link between Wall Street and Washington was close, with•Wall Street on the pulling end of the chain.
All that has changed. It has changed since the first year of the New Deal ; it was changing even under Mr. Hoover, as the Govern- ment went into the banking business in a big way. And some of the New York resentment of the New Deal was caused by pique at the necessity imposed on business leaders of going to Washington to ask favours instead of having the politicians come to Wall Street to get orders. It was not a mere question of pique, however. For Wall Street lost, and will never recover, its old profitable role. No longer will the agents or chiefs of European States make the rounds of Morgan, Dillon Reid and the other great banking houses like client kings in Rome. Now not only they, but other old clients of Wall Street, go to Washington to see Jesse Jones. And Mr. Kiplinger makes it plain to his readers, many of whom will groan at the news, that the good, old days are gone for ever. Government is going to be bigger than the biggest business and is not going to be merely a façade for big business.
That means that politics, the arts of making friends and influencing people, is of first-rate importance. It is no good being a first-class administrator or technician if you can't get on with the politicos.
That gift is not the only thing necessary, but it is one of the things that are necessary. And in his interesting discussions of the weight of various Washington figures, Mr. Kiplinger tells us again and again how much of this indispensable talent the Big Shot has. If he hasn't any and doesn't acquire any quickly, the Big Shot doesn't stay a Big Shot—in Washington at any rate. For in this city of a million people, politics is the local industry, is what the automobile industry is to Detroit or tyres to Akron. The politicians are the indispensable technicians who transform raw power into politically usable power. And chief of them is the President.
Mr. Kiplinger is not, one surmises, one of the class he calls " causers." So his judgement on the President is not that of a starry-eyed New Dealer or of a Daughter of the American Revolution seeing the red, dripping hand of That Man in nearly all human activities in Washington. The same cool appraisement is to be noted in the account of the Vice-President, Mr. Wallace. Mr. Kip- linger likes Mr. Wallace, he admires him, but on his political future he has his fingers crossed. In his list of Washington dialect words, "The Next President" he defines as "a term used by friends of Henry Wallace to describe Henry Wallace."
Although the American and British reader will turn with most natural human curiosity to the list of fifty-five men who are the most prominent figures in war-time Washington, it is the mass of Government servants who make the character of the city. And to them, Mr. Kiplinger is fair. He defends them against some of the sillier charges brought against them ; he reminds readers who may have forgotten it that Washington has changed a lot since Henry Adams wrote Democracy, or Mark Twain The Gilded Age, and Uncle Sam Ward was the most cultivated of lobbyists. But Washington has its romantic side still, though the number of gold- braided diplomats is sadly reduced and the supply of femmes fatales luring Senators to forgetfulness of their oaths totally exhausted.
In the Carlton bar, in the Cosmos Club, in the National Press Club, in a score of other goldfish bowls, the great, the near great and the would-be great talk, pose and watch their publicity. In scores of buildings, old and new, men and women work hard, devotedly, intelligently. Across the river at Arlington, the new War Department building is growing fast and vast. New buildings spring up over night. One which houses part of the State Depart- ment has the name of "Temporary U," admirable title for a musical-comedy song. How temporary will these buildings be? How soon will Washington relapse not into torpidity but into the com- parative peace of the first year of the New Deal? Not for a long time. Every American war has increased the importance, the size, the impressiveness of Washington. And at this moment, Washington is well on the way to being a world capital, for here is the centre of the great, untouched power that Hitler has called into action against him and his people.
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