Edwin A. Locke Oral History Interview

Notice
This is a transcript of a tape-recorded interview conducted for the Harry S. Truman Library. A draft of this transcript was edited by the interviewee but only minor emendations were made; therefore, the reader should remember that this is essentially a transcript of the spoken, rather than the written word.

Numbers appearing in square brackets (ex. [45]) within the transcript indicate the pagination in the original, hardcopy version of the oral history interview.

See also Edwin A. Locke Files and Edwin A. Locke Papers

RESTRICTIONS
This oral history transcript may be read, quoted from, cited, and reproduced for purposes of research. It may not be published in full except by permission of the Harry S. Truman Library.

Opened October 1967
Harry S. Truman Library
Independence, Missouri

[1]

FUCHS: Mr. Locke, would you start with a brief sketch of your life, when and where you were born, your education, and your jobs leading up to your entrance into the Government?

LOCKE: I was born and brought up in Boston by a Yankee father and a Southern mother. I went to primary and secondary day schools in the Boston area, and then attended Phillips Exeter Academy, New Hampshire, for a year before going to Harvard from which I graduated in 1932 with a major in Germanic languages and literatures and an A.B. degree cum laude. I then went to work for the Chase National Bank in New York in a training class they had for training men

[2]

for service in their overseas branches. And in June of 1933 I was sent to the bank's Paris office where I remained for two and a half years, and then in the fall of 1935 to the London office for six months. In April 1936 I was transferred back to New York City where I worked in various departments of the bank until the war came along.

During 1940 I tried to get into the Naval Air Force, but the Navy decided that unless things got terribly desperate they could get along without an old man like me. I was 29 or 30 at the time. So I got myself a job in Washington in the Advisory Commission of the Council of National Defense, working for a friend of mine named Cliff Hill, who was an assistant, in fact the right hand man of Donald Nelson, then Director of Purchases.

FUCHS: Was this friend of yours in the Government

[3]

at the time?

LOCKE: Yes, he was, though on a temporary basis. He had been working for the Guaranty Trust Company in New York. We had certain friends in common and I had met him in that way.

FUCHS: You went in as a compensated employee?

LOCKE: No. For the first three months I believe I was without compensation. Then I went on a salary basis and severed all my connections with the Chase. The Advisory Council on National Defense later became the Office of Production Management, and later still was partially superseded by the Supply, Priorities and Allocations Board, which in turn was succeeded by the War Production Board. At that point I became a direct assistant to Donald Nelson.

FUCHS: What were your principal duties in the National Advisory Council and the Supply,

[4]

Priorities and Allocations Board?

LOCKE: In the beginning, in the Advisory Commission, it was mainly a problem of dividing up short items among a number of claimants. I remember the first job I had was to divide up three very large milling machines among four very important claimants, one of which was the Phelps Dodge Copper Corporation. Copper was of course very vital to the then defense effort, and I remember allocating one of the machines to Phelps Dodge. Sometimes we simply established priorities among competing claims and at other times actually allocated supplies when there were not enough to meet all needs.

FUCHS: I see. Was there much in your experience in France or England that helped you?

LOCKE: Not really except for the general training and development of the mind and analytical

[5]

powers.

In the War Production Board, I got something of everything. Anything that was a problem came to the Chairman's office, and would be mainly turned over to one of his three assistants of whom I was one. So I had a tremendous variety of assignments. And it was through that work that I first became acquainted with Mr. Truman, who was, by that time, head of the special Senate Investigating Committee. I remember very vividly being called into Donald Nelson's office one day. This was very early in the history of the War Production Board. I think it must have been in January or February of 1942 Mr. Nelson said, "Eddie, I've just come back from a meeting with the Truman Committee, and I've agreed that you will be the liaison man between the War Production Board and the Committee."

And I looked at him, staggered by this

[6]

statement, because I knew that the relations between the Board and the Committee had been very difficult and tense. I thought for a moment that Mr. Nelson was angry at me for one reason or another. So, I immediately said, "But Boss, I'm not a lawyer."

He said, "Eddie, that's exactly why I'm giving you this job. The lawyers have made such a mess of our relationship up there on the Hill that I don't want them to have anything to do with it at all. You go up there and when we're right, you stand your ground and I'll back you up. But if we're wrong, you admit it, and we'll change our plans accordingly."

FUCHS: Now, had lawyers been principally representing...

LOCKE: Yes, the War Production Board had as a general counsel a very fine man, a very top

[7]

notch lawyer by the name of John Lord O'Brian; but as so often happens in human relations, he and the Truman Committee didn't hit it off together at all. I suppose that perhaps Judge O'Brian was taking somewhat the legalistic approach, defending his client to the death, so to speak, whereas my instructions and thus my approach were quite different. The essence of our approach to the Truman Committee was that we were both interested in the success of the war effort; we were both to work on it together, and to try to arrive at the right answer regardless of whether either of us had taken the correct position in the first place.

FUCHS: Well, now, had the general counsel, O'Brian, appeared before committee hearings or was this done backstage, so to speak?

LOCKE: Some of both. And then, of course, the atmosphere in those days was hectic and charged,

[8]

and it was easier for tensions to build up than in more ordinary times.

FUCHS: Did you go before the Committee in hearings?

LOCKE: In the beginning I had a rather difficult few weeks, and my relations, although I'd see Senator Truman occasionally, were mainly with Hugh Fulton, the Committee's counsel, and with such assistant counsels and staff members as Rudolph Halley and George Meader. I had a difficult first few weeks because they were obviously aggravated by the War Production Board, and didn't feel confident that we would play it straight with them. But after those first few weeks, they began to see that we were sincere, that we were giving them the facts, that we were interested only in the success of the war effort. Our relations greatly improved and became very, very close, so that we were collaborating most intimately together on many,

[9]

many, war problems, We always took pains never to try to embarrass the committee, and the committee wasn't always right. They sometimes took hasty positions but we wouldn't immediately stand up in public and denounce them or try to belittle them; instead we would explain to them why they were wrong. I remember the case of high tenacity rayon tire cord versus cotton tire cord. The committee had taken a rather impulsive position against rayon. Instead of demolishing them with a statement as to the facts of the situation, we went up to the committee and explained why we had taken a different position than they had, and provided the facts to support that position. The committee then called a special public hearing at which we presented this material and subsequently came out with a report to the public presenting these facts and coming to a different conclusion than the one with which they had

[10]

started. So, we worked this way together and they never tried to embarrass us either. It was a fine relationship. The Truman Committee was a Senatorial body which, I think, made a very significant contribution to the war.

FUCHS: A letter in your papers, which Mr. Nelson wrote to Senator Truman, said that before a certain report was issued that they would like an opportunity to come to his office and speak with him about it. Now was that the customary thing? Had other agencies been doing that prior to that time?

LOCKE: I don't know what other agencies had been doing, but we evolved a system of collaboration with the committee, whereby they gave us 1p draft any report which they were going to publish, so that at least we could assure that their facts would be correct. And sometimes the correction of facts lead to somewhat

[11]

different conclusions. Now, we felt we had every right to present facts and to correct misstatements of fact in the committee's report. As to conclusions, they, of course, had every right to come to any conclusion they wished. We felt free to disagree, and we had some interesting discussions. But by and large we never had any serious difference of opinion regarding the Truman Committee's reports. They were a real help to the War Production Board, and, therefore, to the whole war effort.

FUCHS: To go back to your first couple of weeks, is there anyone who stands out in your memory who was especially critical or "short" with you?

LOCKE: This wasn't a personal thing with me, but they made it very plain -- and my contact was primarily with Hugh Fulton -- that they were very displeased with the War Production Board, and

[12]

had very little confidence in it based on their recent experience. So, my first job was to establish their confidence in us as individuals, in us as people of integrity, and in us as men who were interested in getting on with the war effort. Once they accepted that, then we began to work very effectively together.

FUCHS: It has been written by a young scholar that Mr. Nelson didn't really assume the power that they allowed him by the law and that the Committee was concerned about this. Do you have any reflections on that? In other words, that he didn't exercise the full scope of his power in handling the war production effort in dealing with the various agencies?

LOCKE: The Committee always had a feeling of this sort regarding Nelson, that he was not sufficiently a decisive man, and that he could, to use your phrase, use more of his powers more often. And

[13]

I think to a considerable degree, this was justified. I used to hear in business circles the same criticism about Mr. Nelson, that he took much too long to reach a decision and that he was this way not because the situation required a delayed decision, but because he was procrastinating. And some of this, I think, certainly came through in his direction of the War Production Board. Now, to a degree, this quality of procrastination stood him in good stead at times in Washington in those days because as you know, in public life, if you get out too far ahead of public opinion you can get into serious trouble. Nelson, however, was inclined to lag behind public opinion, and it was only a crisis situation that would serve to bring him abreast of or up to date with or in pace with public opinion. We had a series of these crises. And because of this lag, so to speak, in Nelson's willingness to act, the

[14]

Truman Committee found a number of causes for criticism.

FUCHS: Do you recall anything specific that they felt was a major shortcoming in WPB at the time you were assigned as liaison?

LOCKE: Well, when I was assigned as liaison, the War Production Board was brand new. It hadn't been in operation for more than a few weeks.

FUCHS: Do you recall your first meeting with Senator Truman?

LOCKE: No, I don't. My first meeting was with Mr. Fulton and then at some early point he introduced me to Senator Truman.

FUCHS: Were you particularly impressed with Mr. Fulton's capabilities?

LOCKE: Hugh Fulton had an extraordinary mind. Although he was a rather rotund, definitely

[15]

overweight person who looked something like a hayseed from the country, he had an amazingly capable mind, and a good ability to express himself, particularly on paper.

FUCHS: How about Charles Patrick Clark?

LOCKE: I knew Charlie Clark, but Charlie was sort of the natural politician. He was something of a wheeler-dealer, and certainly an amiable fellow, but he didn't have the intellect that Fulton and Halley and some of the other staff members had.

FUCHS: Halley is another one I am wondering about.

LOCKE: Halley was another good man. Both he and Fulton, as you know, are now dead.

FUCHS: Roger Willson, who wrote a doctoral dissertation at Harvard, said, "The correlation between Truman's influence and policy development

[16]

is much clearer in the case of WPB. Without Truman’s influence, it is unlikely that agency would have long endured or remained as it was. The same might be said of Nelson. Truman's great influence on Nelson and WPB may simply evidence the ability of a strong chairman of a powerful committee to work his will with the weak head of an unstable agency, but through that means Truman played an important role in the policy-making structure of the defense program." Do you have any comment about that?

LOCKE: To be fair about it, I must say, I think that statement both exaggerates the strength of Mr. Truman's influence on the Board and the weakness of Mr. Nelson. Both factors definitely existed and both were important in the situation, but Nelson was not as weak, especially in 1942, and 1943, as this statement implies. His was an incredibly great responsibility and a very

[17]

vital responsibility, It was the very heart, really, of a successful war effort, and inherent in it were enormous problems, not only of war production, but of handling, and to a large degree, directing the entire economy. I think that, by and large, Nelson did a remarkably good job in the first two years of the war. I, of course, working intimately with him saw more of his weaknesses than outsiders would, but with all due recognition of those weaknesses, the man still had some unusual strengths. One of those strengths, was an almost encyclopedic knowledge of the American economy, very wide friendships in American business, and considerable good sense and sound judgment about the economy. His weaknesses were more in the realm of his personal life, his inclination to overindulge himself, and also in his indecisiveness and procrastination, which I may say are not necessarily as harmful or as much to be criticized

[18]

in public life as they might be in business. When you’re dealing with public sentiment and political developments, it is as I said a few minutes ago, very dangerous to get out too far ahead of public opinion. Nelson was an excellent expositor and an excellent salesman. He had a physical stature which was imposing and impressive. He was, I think, in the time and the circumstance, a good choice for the job. In fact, probably the best choice that was then available.

Now, Mr. Truman never tried to impose his will, as this scholar expresses it, on the War Production Board. Mr. Truman, on occasion, had a different opinion as to what ought to be done but he was clearly simply after the best answer in the light of the war effort. I don't know whether this man implies that Mr. Truman willfully tried to impose his opinion arbitrarily on the War Production Board. If he

[19]

does imply that, he couldn't be more wrong. Truman was motivated, and I worked with him very closely, by the desire to have us win the war as quickly and as economically in lives as we could, Naturally, being of strong mind and dealing as he was with great affairs, he would not always agree with Nelson, and he made it plain when he didn't agree; and I looked upon it all, not as a matter of his imposing his will, but of his helping the War Production Board to get some things done, and to get some programs across and accepted, which would have been much more difficult or even impossible to put across without his help. That is why I keep referring to what was initially a partnership between the War Production Board and the Truman Committee. They worked exceedingly well together, more so as the war went on.

FUCHS: There was some press notice at the time that there was a feud between the military and

[20]

the WPB, and apparently it was vehement enough and prevalent enough that Mr. Nelson, as early as September 16, 1942, in a memo in your files, addressed to all the executive staff members of WPB, mentioned this alleged controversy between WPB and the War and Navy Departments. At that time he said that the relations were of the best, both official and personal; but he was expressing his desire to the staff that they don't make thoughtless remarks and get into public polemics about this. Do you have any reflections on that, sir?

LOCKE: Yes, I think Nelson's official and personal relationships with the Army and the Navy were good. In those days, Patterson was Under Secretary of the Army and Forrestal was Under Secretary of the Navy, both of them being in charge of supply and production for the two services, It was their job to get as much as they could as quickly as they could from

[21]

the economy for their services. Nelson's job, however, was somewhat different. It was to get maximum performance from the entire economy, giving due consideration to military as well as civilian needs, and to effect the optimum balance among them. Naturally, his function, his point of view, his conclusions often weren't in all respects the same as those of the Navy and the Army, so there was many a conflict as to how tight materials, components, equipment and production facilities should be divided. But Nelson developed what I found then and in later years was a very excellent technique. He set up a committee or a sub-committee of experts from each of the claimant agencies and put them to work developing a factual report. It was very interesting to see how, once the facts were established, there usually was very little left to argue about. The fiercest arguments were in those situations where the people

[22]

around the table had the least information.

FUCHS: What do you think occasioned the press reports of differences between WPA and War and Navy?

LOCKE: Well, I think it was perfectly natural because, among other things, we were in a world war and the man in uniform had very strong pressures on them. They were suffering defeats in the fields; they were absorbing heavy casualties; they were seeing what they thought to be the whole strategic position of the United States threatened, and in the circumstances they had no sympathy, for example, with repair parts for the civilian economy. We, on the other hand, in the War Production Board, knew perfectly well that if you didn't keep spare parts moving to the civilian economy, you wouldn't get as much war production and thus our effectiveness in the field would steadily decrease. So, feelings were very, very strong, as well they might be in

[23]

such a situation of grave national peril. Opinions were expressed strongly and with deep emotion and at times to the press. The press likes to make something out of high level disagreements anyway, it is news. So it was logical for articles to report that the War Production Board, the Army and the Navy were fighting with each other. But, as I say, although there were strong, very strong, differences of opinion, I never knew a time when it was impossible for them to work together, personally as well as officially.

FUCHS: Do you think there was more squabbling over which military department should get the most or whether it was civilians versus the military?

LOCKE: There was some of the first, but it was more than anything else, the second -- how much the civilian economy should get against the military economy.

[24]

FUCHS: Were you acquainted with Bruce Catton?

LOCKE: Yes, very well. He was Director of Information in the War Production Board.

FUCHS: Do you recall discussing any of the problems, particularly this one about relations between WPB and the military, War and Navy?

LOCKE: Not particularly. Bruce Catton was a fine man whom we all liked and respected very much. But I must confess it was a pleasant surprise to me, and I think to many others that he turned out to be such an exceptionally gifted and successful writer.

FUCHS: Civil War period, primarily.

LOCKE: Yes.

FUCHS: He did write this book, of course, War Lords of Washington, which was quite critical of the Army’s relation with WPB. Do you recall anything

[25]

about that?

LOCKE: No, though of course he was in the middle of a lot of this, particularly when it got out into the press. He was a man of fine character and did his job well, and wrote fine letters and press releases and so forth; but I never suspected that he had this extraordinary talent for telling a tale so well.

FUCHS: Alfred Steinberg, who wrote the book The Man From Missouri, which is more or less a popular history of Mr. Truman's life and times, said that (in regard to the military versus the civilian agencies), "The situation had grown so bad that Truman privately rebuked Donald Nelson in his Doghouse and urged him to insist that civilians run the war production program."

Were you aware at the time that Nelson had been rebuked by Truman privately?

[26]

LOCKE: Not specifically; of course Mr. Nelson wouldn’t have told us this, even if he had been. But it wouldn't surprise me at all if Truman had given him such a lecture, and I think to a degree Nelson deserved it; and certainly Truman was the kind of man who wouldn't hesitate to give it to him if he felt it was warranted.

FUCHS: A letter from Donald Nelson to Senator Truman on January 4, 1943, which your papers show was written by you, has been referred to by a scholar as rather an out of the ordinary letter for a head of a board to address to a chairman of a Senate committee that was investigating his board.

LOCKE: I think that David Noyes and Albert Carr and conceived that letter and put it together. As I remember it, our thinking was that Nelson had been working with the Truman Committee for

[27]

nearly a year at that point, and there was close cooperation and mutual confidence between us. We felt, and I know Mr. Nelson shared in this, that the Truman Committee was making a very real contribution to the progress of the war effort, and that Senator Truman was of great help to the War Production Board in many ways, including backing us up in some of our differences with the military services. In the circumstances we felt the man deserved a pat on the back from the agency which Congress had set him up to oversee, and that's why we sent that letter.

FUCHS: It was only out of the ordinary in that a lot of people wouldn't take the time to do something like that,

LOCKE: And wouldn't think of it, wouldn't realize the importance of doing it. I think it was not only a nice thing to do, but a wise thing to do under the circumstances. Human relations

[28]

are important regardless of the situation. This was a human relations move to a man that richly deserved what was said about him.

FUCHS: There was a considerable hullabaloo, so to speak, about the dollar-a-year men around 1943. Do you have recollections of that?

LOCKE: Yes, I was right in the middle of that one. That was one of the assignments to which I referred a while ago when I said that the chairman's office got all the trouble. If things went well you never heard anything about it, but if things got into difficulty you were pulled into the problem immediately. And this dollar-a-year controversy was one of them. As a matter of fact, it was the first important problem I had to handle as liaison man between the War Production Board and the Truman Committee. Nelson turned it over to me one day, simply told me to handle it and get it straightened

[29]

out. I found that the trouble, more than anything else, was coming from poor administration of dollar-a-year appointments, poor handling of dollar-a-year appointments within the War Production Board. Now, the Truman Committee had certain reservations about the soundness of bringing key businessmen into the WPB and paying them on a dollar-a-year basis, but we felt it was absolutely vital, that it would be impossible for us to run the war production effort without men of business background, experience and talent. After all, who could possibly know as much about running an economy as the men who had been successful in business in that economy. So, the Truman Committee became willing to defer to our judgment in this. It is a case in point with reference to that scholar's remark. Truman didn't by any means always impose his will on the War Production Board, This was an issue on which we

[30]

stood our ground because it was absolutely vital, and Truman adjusted to it very gracefully, He felt that our judgment in such a field should prevail. What we found was, that when these War Production Board appointments were being considered, the information we were getting was inadequate, either because we weren't asking the right questions on our application forms or because we weren't seeing to it that the applicant was giving us complete answers. I remember sitting down with a 'man in the chairman's office and going through probably fourteen or fifteen separate printer's proofs of an application form for dollar-a-year men that would in the first place, ask questions that could not possibly be misunderstood; and second, would elicit answers that were complete and accurate. It was about the fifteenth draft that we finally put into effect, and the purpose of the application was, more than anything else, to point up

[31]

possible conflicts of interest so that we wouldn't put the president of U.S. Steel Corporation in charge of the steel division. We would, in all likelihood, put in charge of this a steel man who knew the steel business, but not one who was preeminent or dominating in the field. Then, having devised the proper form, we took great pains to review each application very carefully in order to spot immediately conflicts of interest and eliminate the trouble right then and there. Of course, we checked these people very carefully through the FBI, and occasionally there were problems of morality or whatnot involved. But the new system eliminated, literally, ninety-five percent of the trouble. With a good application form and good use of the knowledge on that form and careful checking by the FBI, the dollar-a-year problem virtually disappeared.

FUCHS: Do you think Mr. Truman retained second thoughts about the dollar-a-year men even though

[32]

he did defer to you?

LOCKE: Well, I can't really say. I think it was some thing that he never was enthusiastic about, but considered possibly as a necessary evil, or at least unavoidable.

FUCHS: You've indicated you worked closely with David Noyes and A. Z. "Bob" Carr in WPB. Were you with them before?

LOCKE: No, I never knew either of them before. David Noyes came into the War Production Board after I did -- I don't remember through whom -- and he knew Bob Carr. David Noyes was sort of the idea man, the man of inspiration, the man of articulation and concept. I was the fact-gatherer and analyzer and administrator. And we needed a man who, more than anything else, was a good writer and thinker. David Noyes knew Bob Carr and thought very highly of him. So we got him to join us and we had a very, if

[33]

I do say so, wonderful triumvirate that worked exceedingly closely with Nelson all through the war.

FUCHS: Is it fair to say that Noyes brought Bob Carr into the picture?

LOCKE: Yes, very definitely, and then the three of us worked extremely closely together.

FUCHS: You at that time were the executive assistant to Nelson?

LOCKE: We were all assistants to Nelson.

FUCHS: What was Dave Noyes title, if he had one?

LOCKE: I think he was an assistant. We were all on Nelson's immediate staff. It was only after I went over to the White House that I became special assistant; first, executive assistant to Mr. Nelson and then when he left, I had his job as special representative to the President and then became a special assistant.

[34]

FUCHS: Would you know when Noyes and Carr became acquainted with Mr. Truman?

LOCKE: Not with any precision, no. I think they must have gotten acquainted with him by degrees as the war went on, being as close as they were to Nelson and the Truman Committee playing as important a part as it did. But I would guess that their main intimacy with him developed after the war.

FUCHS: After he was President?

LOCKE: After he was President.

FUCHS: Noyes, in particular, wasn't assistant liaison man for the Truman Committee?

LOCKE: No.

FUCHS: Noyes never had, as far as I know, an official position or title in the White House. Do you know why that was?

[35]

LOCKE: He preferred it that way. He preferred to work behind the scenes, and I don't want to be misunderstood in using that phrase. He prefers not to be in the limelight himself, but to serve important causes through people whom he deeply respects and has a real affection for. In the White House I believe he was classified as a consultant without compensation.

FUCHS: It wouldn't have been through him that you eventually were asked to participate in the White House Office?

LOCKE: No, you see, I was there when Truman was sworn in. As a matter of fact, I was in the Cabinet Room. Nelson used to sit with the Cabinet as a special representative for President Roosevelt. He used to attend Cabinet meetings. The day Roosevelt died Nelson was out of town. It was some time late in the afternoon that the news came through the White

[36]

House, I believe. I was out getting a little exercise riding a bicycle around Georgetown. I came home and my wife said, "Where have you been, the White House is trying to get hold of you, urgently. They want you to call them at once."

So, I called and they said, "Would you please come down to the Cabinet Room right away."

So, I put on a clean shirt and went rushing down there and got the news that Roosevelt had died and Mr. Truman was going to be sworn in very shortly as President. I was there on that very day.

FUCHS: You were in the room when he was sworn in? A picture was taken with the clock in the background. I guess you were on the other side of the room?

LOCKE: Yes, that's right. This was a very sober,

[37]

almost frightened man.

FUCHS: Did you exchange any words at that time with Mr. Truman?

LOCKE: Just to shake hands and congratulate him.

FUCHS: Then Noyes actually became associated with the White House after you?

LOCKE: Yes, sometime after. I don't know exactly how that developed. But David Noyes has many extraordinary talents, and one of them is as a kind of a therapist for men with big problems to deal with. He is very sympathetic, helpful, and at times, inspired friend.

FUCHS: Did you work with "Cap" Krug prior to this?

LOCKE: Yes, some during the War Production Board days.

FUCHS: What was his capacity there before he succeeded Nelson?

[38]

LOCKE: Well, I don't remember what his titles were but he came up through the hierarchy to steadily more important positions. He, too, had great physical stature, just as Nelson did, and a certain calmness about him and a certain imperturbability. And I think he had a fair amount of ability, but I don't think that he was really in a class with Nelson, despite Nelson's faults.

FUCHS: How do you think Charles Wilson would have worked out if he had stayed on, as was originally planned, to take Mr. Nelson's place?

LOCKE: Well, Charlie Wilson was not regarded around the War Production Board as having an exceptional amount of ability. He was a rather simple man in terms of personality. His thought processes were somewhat on the slow side, and the contrast between him and Dave Noyes in that respect was particularly striking. To be present when Noyes, with his quick, penetrating and articulate mind,

[39]

was debating questions of the day with Charlie Wilson was a real treat Charlie also at times had difficulty in controlling his emotions. I remember the most favorite epithet I’ve ever had thrown at me in public was when Charlie Wilson resigned in a huff from the War Production Board. He resigned calling Cliff Hill, another assistant of Donald Nelson, and me "insubordinate subordinates." Our sin in Charlie Wilson's eyes was that we were loyal to Donald Nelson. In public life, as you know, it's often difficult to attack the top man, but it's very inviting to attack the people around him, especially his assistants; that's what happened in our case. Charlie resigned claiming among other things that Nelson couldn't control his assistants.

FUCHS: I believe he charged that certain things had been leaked to the press at the time and he got quite exercised. Nelson seemed to have some faith in him. Was this on the basis of his past

[40]

achievements?

LOCKE: I suppose so, yes, the fact that he'd been head of General Electric, and the fact that Nelson never willingly tackled a disagreeable problem, you see, if there was any other way of doing it. Now Nelson did fire Ferdinand Eberstadt but only after a good deal of pressure had been brought on him, and a great deal of support had been lined up by his staff, including his several assistants.

FUCHS: Eberstadt was in charge of what?

LOCKE: He was, I think, Vice Chairman of the War Production Board. He had a very high post.

FUCHS: What was the crux of the difficulty between them?

LOCKE: Between Wilson and...

FUCHS: Between Nelson and Eberstadt.

[41]

LOCKE: Well, I never fully understood it except Eberstadt had an extraordinary quality of making people feel that he was engaged in intrigue. Now the difficulty between Nelson and Wilson was a very simple one. Nelson believed that the war economy should start making some quiet preparation for peace, making prototypes and so forth, as long as there was no interference with the war effort. Well, Charlie Wilson, backed by the military, took the position that nothing should be done to prepare for peace, everything should be a hundred percent devoted to the war effort and that the making of a prototype would not only divert scarce materials and skilled labor, but be damaging psychologically because it would get people thinking about peace instead of about war. We felt on the contrary that if people in the plants, and in the economy could not see that some preparations were being made for peacetime, the effect on their morale would be very, very

[42]

damaging, and it would be a very natural thing for them to think "What's going to happen to me and to this company and to this plant? When peace comes it's just all going to collapse." And it would be quite destructive to his morale and thus to the effort he put into war production.

FUCHS: When you were working on priorities and purchases, did you come in touch with what the Russians were requesting?

LOCKE: Yes, very much so, because Roosevelt turned over to Nelson, who turned over to me, the meeting of these commitments which we made to the Russians for supplying various weapons as well as machinery, equipment, and raw materials. And so I worked quite closely with the Russians for a couple of years. It was a very interesting experience. At first it was particularly difficult, because everybody hated the Russians and to try to get the Russian needs recognized was

[43]

quite an exercise. But then as we got into the war and got working with them as allies that part of the problem pretty well disappeared. But then we had other problems with the Russians. They were very insistent that the absolute letter of our agreements be lived up to. That is the Russian mentality. You have a terrible time negotiating with them, but once you reach an agreement, especially in business matters, they are very apt to insist you abide by it in a literal way. I don't mean at all that you can trust a Russian or that he would hesitate to tear up a contract if it was in his interest to do so; but once you got a contract with him he was disposed to live up to all that was in it in a most exact way. I suppose this is part of their over-centralized bureaucracy. If a bureaucrat is given a document to see that it is carried out and if he deviates in the slightest from it, he's in very serious trouble. So we

[44]

used to have a lot of difficulties with the Russians on the details, because if you promised something on January 14, then the Russians wanted it on January 14 and not on the 16th or the 18th and they raised a terrible fuss if it wasn't there on the 14th. And, of course, in wartime you have all sorts of dislocations and changes of plans and so forth, and these tight schedules often couldn't be lived up to exactly. I knew that the Russian representatives here were under terrible pressure personally. They were, I'm sure, usually blamed personally if things didn't come through on time. So they used to make it rather difficult, but not impossible, for us. Some of them I got to know fairly well personally, but you always, at least I always had my guard up in any contacts with them.

To some extent they abused or misused the equipment that we sent them, especially industrial equipment. I was with Mr. Nelson in 1943 and 1944

[45]

on his trips to Russia and we saw refineries under construction, where the most terrible treatment was given to our pieces of equipment, There were long delays in construction and meanwhile the key pieces of equipment would be left out in the open and mistreated, unbelievably mistreated. On the other hand, it was obvious throughout Russia that the Russians had the deepest respect for American production and American ability to provide all these materials and pieces of equipment. Many's the toast I've had to drink to American production in Russia.

FUCHS: In vodka?

LOCKE: In vodka -- bottoms up.

FUCHS: Were you acquainted with Ralph K. Davies of PAW?

LOCKE: Yes, yes, I didn't know him well. The petroleum was quite well run, again in considerable part because it was staffed by industry people

[46]

who knew what they were doing. There were some conflicts, inevitably, but I would say that by and large, the Petroleum Administration for War was one of our lesser problems.

FUCHS: Touching on procurement, I understood that there was a China Defense Supplies, Incorporated and a Universal Trading Corporation which were the Chinese procurement agencies. I wonder if you recall anything about that, and was there any feeling that they might have been involved with Communists at that time?

LOCKE: I had no impression of their being involved with Communists, no, and their supply needs were relatively minor in the overall picture, so that, although I handled for a long time in the War Production Board the needs of foreign countries, I don't recollect China ever presenting any particular problem, mainly because their needs were so simple and so small.

[47]

FUCHS: In regard to the trip you took with Nelson in '43 to the United Kingdom, North Africa, the Middle East and Russia, is there anything that stands out in your memory that might not be documented in your papers?

LOCKE: All the contacts of any significance were fully reported either by Nelson himself or by the State Department people who were present. The only item that I think possibly was not fully covered in any report was an interview which Nelson had with Stalin, I think it was in the summer of 1944. I think we were over there in August in ‘44. Nelson had a long session with Stalin. I was not present but sat outside the office door with Stalin's bodyguard. Stalin was rather cool, in fact, almost cold at the beginning of the conference. Only when Nelson got talking about post-war needs and post-war opportunities for development and for possible trade between the United States and Russia, did Stalin

[48]

come alive. And he reached for, as Nelson told me the story, a big blue pencil on his desk and started listing the things on a piece of paper that Russia would need -- 10,000 tons of rail, so many locomotives, so much this and so much that. I chided Nelson afterward for not asking Stalin for that blue pencil and that piece of paper, because I think it would have been quite a souvenir to have.

FUCHS: Yes, it would. Then it was announced late in '44 that Nelson had resigned and Roosevelt announced that he was sending him to China. Was this initiated by FDR, or was it something that somebody else thought should be done, or maybe Mr. Nelson himself, and it came through in the course of things?

LOCKE: Well, Nelson could often rise to the occasion. The need was tremendous in '41 and '42, and even in '43, and he worked terribly hard and

[49]

effectively. Of course you know the miracle that was American war production. But gradually, Nelson lost interest. The need was not as urgent. We were on top of things. Although there were plenty of problems the crisis, so to speak, was over insofar as war production was concerned. To be sure we had hundred octane problems and we had landing craft and escort vessels and synthetic rubber and all that kind of thing, but the real crisis of early '42 was gone. And it was apparent that Nelson was less and less interested and inspired. He was then in his late fifties. He had certain problems in his personal life. I suppose he must have been getting more and more of a feeling of tiredness, and he would drink fairly heavily in the evening -- and he could absorb an immense amount of liquor, I don't mean that he was at all an alcoholic, but he did drink pretty heavily. Occasionally he'd get into a minor bit of scandal.

[50]

Such reports kept coming back to Roosevelt and to certain members of Congress. Nelson, who started off so wonderfully in '42, and who could easily, in my opinion, had he continued to develop, been the vice presidential nominee in 1944, and then, by fate, would have been President, instead of moving up from sometime in the middle of 1943, he began moving down. Because of the conflicts in the War Production Board, as well as through his personal life, people were starting to have less respect for him. So, I think there were some of these considerations behind Roosevelt's movement of him to the White House and then the sending of him to China. It was a rather shrewd move, as a matter of fact, because the Chinese problem did stimulate Nelson and interested him a great deal, and he did some very good work, very constructive work over there at a time when the Chinese economy was in almost the final stages of collapse. Through

[51]

what he did, we were able to get a substantial increase in Chinese war production without sending practically anything over from here except experts. The whole story has been written up, and I think you have a copy of the history of the China War Production Board. This was kind of Nelson's last interest in government. So when Roosevelt died it was about the time that Nelson was getting remarried. He resigned very promptly and Truman accepted his resignation and gave me Nelson's job.

FUCHS: A former member of Roosevelt's, and for a time Mr. Truman's staff, has said that FDR had a habit, that if he wanted to ease someone out, he would kick them upstairs by sending them off to another country on a mission, and then when they came back there just wasn't the same job available for them that had been there. Do you think that was partly the case here?

[52]

LOCKE: Well, certainly it's often a good technique for a President. One way to do this, as you indicate, is to send a man on a foreign mission or give him a not too important ambassadorial job or something of that kind. This eases the transition, takes the drama out of the disengagement, and was usually the preferred way of doing things. Now, this was not Mr. Truman's way, but it certainly was FDR's way.

FUCHS: Do you think he was probably the best man available for the job of personal representative to foreign countries and particularly to China?

LOCKE: Well, not to foreign countries in general, but to China. I think it was an excellent choice at the time. It was very timely, and he went over there with Pat Hurley, who, as you know, subsequently became our ambassador to China, and the two of them worked very well

[53]

together. It was a big lift for China because here were two very, very important, internationally known Americans who were sent over there directly by the President of the United States, and whose help in China was very crucial and effective.

FUCHS: Were Hurley and Nelson acquainted prior to that?

LOCKE: I don't believe so. Of course, they knew about each other but I don't know to what extent they may have met.

FUCHS: You don't know who, if anyone, had influenced Roosevelt to send Hurley on this mission in conjunction with Nelson?

LOCKE: No, but Hurley had done a number of missions during the war for Roosevelt. Although Hurley was an ardent Republican, he and FDR hit it off beautifully together, and Hurley and Mr. Truman didn't hit it off at all. They were just completely

[54]

different personalities -- Hurley and Truman,

FUCHS: Yes, in what way would you say? Can you cite any specific examples that would illustrate that?

LOCKE: Well, Hurley was a very colorful character, and of course, so was FDR. They used to have great fun together. They were both rich, they were both used to good things, they were both rather intellectual, in a way. They were both very articulate, and some of their exchanges of cables were classics, real classics. I remember in one, Hurley ended up by saying he was going to write a book which he was going to entitle Alone in China. Their contacts with each other, whether through cables or face to face, stimulated them. They were effervescent personalities, who thoroughly enjoyed each other.

Now, Mr. Truman is very direct, as you know, and doesn't go for a lot of fancy talk and fooling

[55]

around. He comes directly to the point and I think he must have felt that Hurley's posturing and histrionics and so forth were offensive. Hurley was a very forthright man himself who loved a good fight; he must have quickly clashed with Mr. Truman. I think it was more personality than anything else, and you know the story of the public break.

FUCHS: Yes. The American Production Mission to China wasn't set up until September '44. Now, it struck me that this was rather late. What were the reasons for this?

LOCKE: Well, the problem had just never been attended to before, for one thing; and for another, we were just getting into a position where militarily we could supply a lot more help to China. You see, China was at the end of the line before; she was almost an orphan, and we didn't do very much more than maintain

[56]

Chennault and his hundred airplanes there in South China, until we began building big bomber bases in China for bombing Japan. China then began to assume a great deal more importance. I think this is your reason.

FUCHS: You don't know of any earlier appeal that Generalissimo Chiang Kai-shek made?

LOCKE: Oh, I suppose there were constant appeals. But we had given the European theatre first priority and were concentrating on that, and simply didn't have enough to spare to send very much to the Western Pacific.

FUCHS: Is there anything you can say about this mission, or of the Chinese WPB, that might not be documented?

LOCKE: I think the history of it is quite complete. Mrs. Gragg, you know, was the author of it and we gave her complete access to everything; and

[57]

I think her story is quite well told. [Mabel Taylor Gragg. History of the American War Production Mission in China, 1944-45.]

FUCHS: Are there any impressions you had of Chiang Kai-shek or any of the others, Premier Soong, or the Minister of Economics, Wong Wen-hao, that might be of interest to historians?

LOCKE: Well, these were all delightful people. T. V. Soong was the internationalist, the cosmopolitan, the well brought up charming person, an excellent host, intelligent, but I would say, essentially selfish. Wong Wen-hao, who was the vice premier, was said to be one of the top ten geologists of the world. A tiny person physically, very intelligent of course, very conscientious, very devoted to China. At the time the Communists took over, I'm told that he came out and lived for a couple of years in Hong Kong and then went back into China, and is now serving them as a geologist. The Generalissimo was a sparse, disciplined, patient

[58]

man, and I never at all took offense to him the way Stilwell did. Hurley got along very well with the Generalissimo, and I found him a very decent, intelligent man, who wanted to do the right things but, in the more modern, rapidly changing world, didn't always know quite how to do it. During my last days over there with him I couldn't have asked for a more cooperative head of state from the point of view of the United States. With Mr. Truman's permission, we recommended to him an economic development board to plan post-war economy with plenty of scope for private industry and even wrote the basic law for him.

FUCHS: This is the program for the Supreme Economic Council you're speaking of?

LOCKE: Yes, we wrote the whole thing for him, with periodic consultation with him and his people, and he promulgated it and started to help put it into effect; and it was shortly after I came

[59]

back to Washington to work further on this, that Pat Hurley exploded. The President appointed General Marshall to go over there.

[60]

Second Oral History Interview with Edwin A. Locke, April 5, 1967. By J. R. Fuchs, Harry S. Truman Library.

FUCHS: Mr. Locke, when we ended our first session, we were talking about the program for the Supreme Economic Council. Who worked on that law with you?

LOCKE: I know Mr. Carr was there but I don't remember exactly who else was with me on that trip, except Mr. Michael Lee from the Department of Commerce was also there.

FUCHS: Did Mr. Lee serve as your interpreter when you were talking with the Chinese or did they usually provide the interpreter?

LOCKE: No, I usually let it be known that I would prefer to have my own interpreter with me, As a matter of fact, I tactfully also let it be known that I did not want Mrs. Chiang Kai-shek to act as interpreter, because she had a way of taking over the negotiation; and working as I

[61]

often did with people who spoke Chinese, I knew that at times she would summarize someone's statement that may have taken three or four minutes by saying, "He's just talking a lot of nonsense about so-and-so."

So, the Madame was never involved in any of my discussions with the Generalissimo. He often had someone there as an interpreter, and I always had someone. The practice usually is that when you're working through interpreters your interpreter interprets for you in your language and the other man's interpreter interprets for him in his language and one checks the other.

FUCHS: I see. Was this Mr. Lee in many cases?

LOCKS: Yes, on that particular trip it was Mr. Lee.

FUCHS: Did any of these Chinese leaders that you met impress you one way or the other as to whether they really were seeking any accommodation with

[62]

the Chinese Communists?

LOCKE: Well, I never had anything to do with that, really. You see, when I first went over there, Mr. Nelson was assigned to the economic and General Hurley to the political; so, I had no direct involvement in the political aspects at all, I must say that I think the Nationalist Chinese at that time had a more realistic picture of the Chinese Communists than some of our people did who were still rather naive on the subject.

FUCHS: When Mr. Nelson resigned Mr. Candee wrote you a letter, and one thing he mentioned was that they were embarrassed because they had no advance notice of that. Do you know if there was any particular reason why they should or should not have been advised?

LOCKE: Who, the Chinese?

FUCHS: No, the Mission in China; Mr. Candee, I

[63]

believe it was Edward Candee, do you recall him?

LOCKE: Yes.

FUCHS: What was his position?

LOCKE: He was one of the assistants on the staff and he was in China for awhile. He had been through the War Production Board with us and he was complaining, you say, that the Mission in China did not have forewarning?

FUCHS: Yes, they learned through a radio broadcast or something that Nelson had resigned.

LOCKE: I don't really know how they could really have learned otherwise because these things happen very suddenly and are hardly official until they are done, and at that moment the press knows about it. And with radio and cable communications it was almost inevitable that they would hear about it sooner than through us.

FUCHS: Sort of like the MacArthur firing.

LOCKE: Yes.

[64]

FUCHS: In regard to the dissolution of the American Mission in China it seemed to me that there was originally some intention of continuing it for, perhaps, six months or so.

LOCKE: There was, definitely, but as I was saying at the end of our last talk, when Pat Hurley exploded and Truman sent over General Marshall, all of us having anything to do with China were sternly, and strictly, and clearly instructed to do nothing except by and through General Marshall. I forget just how it came about, but very quickly all the non-political activities in China of this nature were quickly brought to an end, and Marshall concentrated on the negotiations with the Communists. I thought it rather a shame myself that this assistance to the Chinese in terms of post-war planning for their economy was not continued for perhaps a year after the war.

[65]

FUCHS: Did you feel after the Marshall mission had run its course, so to speak, that there still would have been time to institute economic assistance and reforms that could have altered the course of events?

LOCKE: Well, the Marshall mission, I think, lasted nearly two years, and really ended in very little; and by that time the Communists were getting very strong and were beginning to take over. So I fear that our opportunities were pretty much lost by that time in the economic area.

FUCHS: Yes. Well, he went over in the beginning of ‘46 and then became Secretary of State when James Byrnes resigned in January '47. Of course, by that time, they had issued various pronouncements about policy towards China and Marshall’s statement in '47 was sort of the writing on the wall as far as the course of

[66]

events. Were your recommendations about economic assistance and so forth, "down the drain" by that time?

LOCKE: I think they were, to use your phrase, "down the drain" when Marshall was appointed. I think he was preoccupied with the political and military aspects and had no time and little interest, perhaps understandably, for the economic, and so the whole thing was quickly phased out.

FUCHS: Even though the Communists and the Kuomintang were still sparring in '46, did you think then that you could have still instituted enough aid fast enough to have altered the situation, the political situation, through the change of the economic situation?

LOCKE: None of those things was a cure-all, all by itself, but I always felt that an essential element in China as elsewhere was a sound and expanding economy, and that work on it should have

[67]

been carried forward at the same time as the military and political aspects were being worked on so actively. And I think if it had been done there would have been some strengthening of the Chinese Nationalist position. I don't presume to say that it would necessarily have changed the course of history, but it might well have enabled the Nationalists to do better; it might have helped them to get gradually greater support from the people. It's hard to say. Some very valuable time and some considerable opportunities were lost.

FUCHS: James A. Jacobson was what in the China Mission?

LOCKS: He was, first, deputy head of it and then head of it. He was a former officer of the Chase Bank in New York and subsequently went back to the Chase and has a very top job there now in its international department.

[68]

FUCHS: Had he been with WPB before?

LOCKE: Yes.

FUCHS: I see. And McManmon, General McManmon?

LOCKE: I don't remember too much about him and his background, except that he wasn't very effective.

FUCHS: Was he head of the Mission, originally?

LOCKE: I don't think he was head of it, but I don't really remember.

FUCHS: You mentioned that when Nelson had his conversations with Stalin, you were not present. Did you ever have occasion to meet the Premier?

LOCKE: Never. I met the rest of them, Mikoyan and Molotov, and I met Stalin’s personal bodyguard in the anteroom of Stalin's office, but that's as close as I got.

FUCHS: In August 1945, which would have been before

[69]

you went to China as a personal representative to the President, you submitted a proposal entitled, "Proposal Aimed at Averting Civil War in China." Do you recall who worked on that report with you?

LOCKE: Mr. Carr did, and I think some of the thinking came from Mr. Nelson, but looking back on it I think it was based on some overoptimistic assumptions and still a few remaining hopeful thoughts about Russian attitudes; so I don't think it was a very valuable report.

FUCHS: Did Mr. Nelson discuss it with you, prior to the announcement, that you would succeed to his position, or did Mr. Truman discuss it with you?

LOCKE: No, it just happened.

FUCHS: You don't know if someone else might have been proposed for the position?

[70]

LOCKE: No, I think it was a very natural thing, because as we were saying a while ago, Mr. Truman gradually became disappointed in Mr. Nelson and so was quite ready to accept his resignation, and then it was a very natural thing since I had been operating as Nelson's deputy to give me the job.

FUCHS: You were acquainted prior to this with the other members of your mission, McManmon and Lee and Harry Berk?

LOCKE: Oh, yes.

FUCHS: What was Berk's background?

LOCKE: Berk had been an advertising man who was then in the Army, or rather in the Air Force, and it was felt helpful to have an Air Force officer with us because we were traveling by Air Transport plane and were visiting a lot of places that were manned by the Air Force. He was quite

[71]

helpful in his own special way.

FUCHS: It was suggested, I suppose by the President, that you stop and talk with MacArthur on your way to China from Tokyo?

LOCKE: Yes, very definitely, and there's a report in the files there somewhere of this conversation with MacArthur.

FUCHS: Any anecdotes about that meeting, any reflections about the General that you might wish to put in the record?

LOCKE: No, but Mr. Truman was very careful to instruct me not to try to go to Manchuria, which I faithfully obeyed.

FUCHS: Do you think you could have gone into the Communist areas?

LOCKE: I don't really know, but he made it plain that he didn't even want me to try.

[72]

FUCHS: Mr. Truman in his Memoirs has mentioned the fact that MacArthur told me "that, in his [MacArthur's] opinion, policies relative to the control of Japan should for the most part be made in Tokyo rather than in Washington. The General 'spoke feelingly' of the problems created for him by policy pronouncements made in Washington without prior consultation with him." Did you discuss this at any length with President Truman when you returned?

LOCKE: No, I tried to make it as easy as possible for a busy man with enormous responsibilities like President Truman and wrote everything down. Mr. Carr was present at the interview with General MacArthur too, and to the best of my knowledge, we didn't discuss it later with President Truman.

FUCHS: You were appointed, I believe, Economic Adviser to the Nationalist Government of China.

[73]

Did that entail conversations with the Chinese in this country and is there anything you might wish to say about that?

LOCKE: Well, it was so soon after -- in the first place I accepted this appointment only with the permission of the President, and of course it was a nonpaying job; all I got was a beautiful illuminated parchment appointment -- but it was so soon after that that Marshall was sent over to China and the activities of the Production Mission wound up, that the job had very little significance. I think initially when I got back I saw some of the Chinese. I had envisioned that I would probably go back to China again for a couple of months after a month or two in Washington, but as I say, Marshall's appointment terminated all that.

FUCHS: Was there no effort whatsoever to send economic advisers to China?

[74]

LOCKE: Not that I recollect. There were one or two Treasury men there who worked with them on monetary matters, but our production-economic mission was wound up very rapidly.

FUCHS: I believe there was an agricultural expert sent.

LOCKE: Well, there were the usual attaches, you know, but that was quite different from an economic mission.

FUCHS: Ambassador Pauley went to China and you attended a dinner with him and Under Secretary of the Navy Gates. Do you recall anything about that, or about Pauley's concern with reparations?

LOCKE: No, he was on the reparations end of it and I don't remember having any particular contact with them.

FUCHS: Did you advise with Nelson to any extent after he had departed? You did say that he had

[75]

just been married again,

LOCKE: Yes, I used to see him occasionally. David Noyes was with him for a couple of years.

FUCHS: Oh, is that right?

LOCKE: Yes, when Nelson became head of the Independent Motion Picture Producers Association.

FUCHS: Who did you think, besides yourself, had Mr. Truman's ear in regard to policy relating to China, either in the State Department or in private counsel; was there anyone?

LOCKE: Well, I suppose the State Department must have had a good deal to say from time to time. Of course, Pat Hurley was over there as ambassador, but once Marshall was appointed everything that had to do with China centered in Marshall.

FUCHS: You seemed to be on good terms with Pat Hurley; he addressed you as "Klondike" Eddie.

[76]

LOCKE: Oh, yes, he was full of fun and a delightful companion, and a very devoted public servant; and I think he performed a great service to the United States. In retrospect I believe he was more nearly right than almost anyone that we had in China, including Donald Nelson.

FUCHS: Would you subscribe to his ideas about certain forces in the State Department then favoring the Communists in China rather than the Chinese Nationalists?

LOCKE: Well, I think subsequent events and investigations have vindicated many of Hurley's statements. He was given to dramatizing things somewhat, but there was an element in the foreign service, a fairly sizeable element, that thought that the Communists were simply reformers who were revolting against an extremely reactionary regime. We got the same story from Molotov in Moscow, that the Chinese Communists weren't Communists at

[77]

all, they were simply agrarian reformers. I sat and listened to him say this very specifically and then elaborate on it. It was a rather easy thing to accept in those days. And looking back, I bless the Providence that must have been watching over me that I never got mixed up with these various people who got into such trouble later on because of their favoring the views of the Chinese Communists.

FUCHS: You were aware of this at the time then and felt, along with Hurley, that there were certain elements that felt this way about the Chinese Communists?

LOCKE: Yes, and it made me uneasy, but at the same time having fought through a war with the Russians as allies we had a certain cordiality of feeling for them, and a certain hope, at least, maybe even an expectation, that the Russian government would at least be interested in

[78]

some kind of cooperation in China. As I say, even that was much too hopeful, though as I recollect it my report advised the retention of a U.S. military force on China's northern boundary during a period of reform and development of the Chinese economy and the Nationalist Government.

FUCHS: Mr. Truman did say in his press conference that your report would be published, but I gather that it never was.

LOCKE: I don't believe it ever was.

FUCHS: Were you greatly surprised by Hurley's precipitate act?

LOCKE: Yes, I was rather. I didn't expect Truman and Hurley to get along as Roosevelt and Hurley had gotten along; I knew them both well enough to know that they weren't instinctively compatible, but I didn't expect the separation

[79]

to take quite this form. I thought it might just be quietly done and in due course Hurley would resign and someone else would replace him, but I didn't think there would be an explosion over it.

FUCHS: Do you think Mr. Truman already had someone in mind to replace Hurley owing to the fact that he called Marshall on the same day?

LOCKE: No, not at all. I think this thing came as a surprise to both of them. I think there were some differences building up, and Pat Hurley could be quite forceful, when he deeply believed in something; and Mr. Truman could be equally strong-minded, and I think they very quickly clashed. Having clashed, and Hurley having resigned so publicly and so vehemently, the President immediately saw that he had to top Hurley, and the only way he could top him was through Marshall. He told me that he telephoned

[80]

Marshall at noontime and asked him to do this and Marshall immediately said "Why yes, Mr. President, of course." This made a tremendous impression on President Truman, and he never forgot it, and always was very devoted to Marshall, because of his readiness to respond to a call from his Commander-in-Chief without question. Marshall's sense of duty was extremely strong.

FUCHS: Do you think there might have been a more fitting selection, granting that the name Marshall as you say, would top Hurley? Do you think a civilian appointee might have been a better selection?

LOCKE: Well, that's really an impossible question to answer, because in the light of the circumstances of the day and of the situation, I think Marshall was the perfect appointment.

FUCHS: At the time you thought that?

[81]

LOCKE: At the time, the perfect appointment in the circumstances. The concept that you could bring the Nationalists and the Communists together to work for China in a reasonably harmonious government was just as wrong as it could be, and that was the trouble with the whole thing, rather than Marshall in particular.

FUCHS: You don't think then that the presence of a military man would have worked any disadvantage?

LOCKE: No, I think if anything at that time it was probably an advantage, because the Generalissimo was a military man and many of the biggest problems were military problems and Marshall had enormous worldwide prestige. I think it was a fine appointment given the circumstances.

FUCHS: There was, of course, at the time, or shortly after, an objection to our military presence there at all, and I just wondered if this might have

[82]

augmented that feeling.

You mentioned General Stilwell earlier and his attitude towards Chiang Kai-shek; did you have any conversations with him?

LOCKE: Yes, but that's because when we first went into China, Stilwell was with me. We picked him up somewhere in India and brought him in on our plane, Nelson and Hurley and Stilwell, and we used to see him from time to time. He was in Chungking for much of the time that we were there, and it was very obvious then that his relations with the Generalissimo and many of the Chinese were extremely bad. He was really insulting to them. In private conversations with him you could see that his attitude was one of disgust and disdain for the Chinese in the key governmental positions.

FUCHS: Do you think Wedemeyer was a good appointment?

[83]

LOCKE: He was much better for that job, much better, at that time. Stilwell did some excellent things in China in earlier days under enormous odds, but when the situation developed to where it was in 1944 and '45, Wedemeyer was infinitely preferable.

FUCHS: How closely did you work with the Department of State and with whom did you work there?

LOCKE: Practically not at all, because the Department of State then, it being wartime, played a relatively minor part in all these affairs. Although we used to see foreign service officers in various overseas spots, and had fine relations with them, and made some good friends who since have gone very far in the service, they weren't playing a very key part in those days; the White House was conducting relations with the Chinese almost exclusively. The State Department was usually, I think, informed, but was not

[84]

playing a key part.

FUCHS: You didn't work then with the officers on the Far Eastern desk?

LOCKE: No.

FUCHS: I believe John Carter Vincent was in there at that time?

LOCKE: Yes, I knew him and would see him occasionally, but as I say, it was Roosevelt and Hurley and Nelson and Marshall.

FUCHS: Were you consulted about the statement that the President issued in the form of a press release regarding our policy toward China in 1945?

LOCKE: No, I was sent a copy of it before its release and told to be guided accordingly.

FUCHS: It was suggested by Nelson to Roosevelt in March '45 that a mission be sent to Greece to

[85]

help increase their productivity. Do you recall that?

LOCKE: Yes, I do.

FUCHS: Do you think this should have been done and would have averted the later situation that developed?

LOCKE: There again, Mr. Nelson had the idea that if we collaborated with the Russians on this in helping to rebuild Greece, things would be much better all around. It was a fine idea but was based on the premise that the Russians would cooperate and were interested in helping Greece, which of course they were not. They were interested in taking over Greece and that's all. So the premise about the Russians was false; but the idea of helping Greece and sending over an economic mission was an excellent one and it showed a lot of foresight. Lord knows, Greece needed help and guidance.

[86]

FUCHS: Were you much in touch with Stettinius while you were in the OPM?

LOCKE: Yes.

FUCHS: What do you think of his qualifications and abilities?

LOCKE: Well, Stettinius was a delightful person. He couldn't have been more charming and more friendly or eager to please and do well, but I felt he had somewhat limited abilities. In his work in the Office of Production Management he created, or allowed to develop underneath him, one of the worst administrative messes I've ever seen anywhere. He was a very good presider over a meeting. He did it with poise and with charm and kept things on the track and kept the atmosphere usually quite pleasant.

FUCHS: What were your thoughts when he was made Secretary of State?

[87]

LOCKE: Well, not very much. I think he was Secretary of State because Roosevelt felt there wasn't much going on in State at that time and that Stettinius would be a good faithful lieutenant, which he was, and wouldn't give him any trouble, which he didn't.

FUCHS: Did you talk with the President at length about your Mission when you returned, or did you put most of it in the form of a report?

LOCKE: I put it all in the form of a report and then we had conversations from time to time, but I took a lot of pains over this report and as a matter of fact, I think the one that I wrote in December 1945, after I got back from that last trip to China, I think that was the third concept. I had tried two others and this was the third concept and probably the fourth or fifth draft of that particular concept. So the chaff was pretty well winnowed out, the

[88]

wheat was pretty well organized in that report and there wasn't much left to say. And the President didn't seem to have any particular questions about it.

FUCHS: Wedemeyer said that your report was quite good, but he did differ with you on the statement that you made that the Communists were well disciplined and ably led. Would you have argued that point with him?

LOCKE: Yes, that was a key part of Wedemeyer's position. I think he underestimated the Communists. I don't mean this as a complaint, but simply as a statement of fact. I felt the Communists to be quite dangerous. Now where I did miss in this situation was in my thought that they might after a while be persuaded to cooperate to some extent. I don't think Wedemeyer accepted this, and on that point he was quite right.

[89]

FUCHS: Do you think we should have unleashed Chiang at any time in view of his leadership earlier?

LOCKE: I don't know whether "unleashed" is the word, actually.

FUCHS: I mean, since he's been in Formosa?

LOCKE: Oh, since he's been in Formosa. Well, this is a very big, broad question, because it involves, of course, immediately our whole position in the Orient and beyond that our whole position in the world. It is a very complex and difficult question and I hesitate to give you an answer, you know, just on that one aspect of it. I must say, I'm tempted by the thought that if we helped Chiang Kai-shek conduct certain commando operations onto the mainland of China, it might be of some help; but here again it is just a thought. If I were President it's something I'd want to explore in great detail before

[90]

I'd take a position on it,

FUCHS: Were you acquainted with George Kennan?

LOCKE: Slightly, but long after the war.

FUCHS: Are there any other thoughts that you might want to add about China?

LOCKE: No, I don't think so.

FUCHS: Then you left the Government briefly?

LOCKE: I left the Government -- not briefly but for about five years, I guess...

FUCHS: Were you not out of Government from January I understood from your papers that you had resigned effective the end of December '45 or early January '46, and then you . . .

LOCKE: No, the end of December ‘46. And so I left the Government at the beginning of January ‘47.

FUCHS: Well, yes, I noticed there was sort of a

[91]

hiatus in the service and you were appointed Special Assistant in March of '46.

LOCKE: Truman came in, you remember, in April '45, and Nelson very promptly resigned and I took over Nelson's job as the personal representative of the President to China. Then, that pretty well ended in December, 1945, when Marshall was appointed. Then I proceeded to do a number of other jobs for the President, and in, I guess, March, 1946, I was given the formal title of Special Assistant to the President, because this Special Representative work was, by then, completely wound up.

FUCHS: I see. You were still operating in the White House really as a White House man? The records are not entirely clear. They differ on this.

LOCKE: All the way through. I simply got the

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formal designation of Special Assistant in March ‘46, and I was assigned primarily government reorganization plans, Civil Aeronautics Board international route cases, and a number of other matters from time to time. But those were the two main areas in which I worked.

FUCHS: You received a letter from Harry Berk in January '46 regarding a proposal of Thomas Watson that the UN headquarters be put in the Midwest. Do you recall anything about that?

LOCKE: Yes, I think he was suggesting Geneva, Wisconsin, wasn't he, because of the name Geneva, and because it would be more in the central part of the United States. I don't remember anything else about it. It was one of those interesting ideas, but it was never seriously considered.

FUCHS: You didn't think it was too good an idea?

LOCKE: Well, it was as I said an interesting idea

[93]

but it was never put into effect, why I don't know.

FUCHS: Carr resigned about February '46.

LOCKE: Somewhere in there.

FUCHS: Yes. Did he have an official position in the White House?

LOCKE: Yes, he was in the White House. His official title was Economic Adviser to the Special Assistant to the President. Later, in 1948, he was called a Special Consultant to the President.

FUCHS: Was he more or less an assistant to you all the time?

LOCKE: Yes.

FUCHS: Mr. Truman wrote you on January 25, 1946, saying he was sorry to see you leave the Government. I guess that's where I got the idea that

[94]

you may have left the Government for a couple of months, or that there was some discussion of your leaving and it was rescinded.

LOCKE: I don't remember. Are you sure that wasn't January '47?

FUCHS: I'm quite certain this is right. I know that you did leave in 1947 and went back to Chase.

Why would Mr. Truman write you a letter of appointment on March 19 and say that you were to be paid $10,000 per year from the Executive Office emergency fund, but newspaper articles the same day and of the following day based on a statement by Ross said that no salary had been fixed?

LOCKE: I don't know, just one of those slips of uncoordination, I guess. Probably Ross didn't know. I would gather that he didn't know and

[95]

that was his quick answer.

FUCHS: There were some charges in the papers at that time that there was confusion in the White House. That there were complaints, for instance, that staff members didn't know whether to, for instance, discuss reorganization with you or with Lawton in Budget, and several other examples were given. Do you recall what occasioned that?

LOCKE: No.

FUCHS: An article said they didn't know whether to see John Steelman or Schwellenbach on labor, or Robert Hannegan or George Allen on appointments -- this was in April '46. Confusion had increased since Rosenman had resigned as "unofficial keeper of the staff of White House secretaries."

LOCKE: No, I suppose it depends on what subject or what agencies the reorganization was covering,

[96]

but I don't remember any particular problems there. The Budget Bureau used to do more of the detailed work on these things and they'd come to the President and then the President would give them, often, to me to analyze and comment and make recommendations on.

FUCHS: You don't recall any grumbling in particular, as Newsweek put it in this article, among the White House aides, about the lack of coordination?

LOCKE: No. Truman was a good administrator. I heard no complaints. He was a much better administrator than FDR.

FUCHS: George Schoeneman sent a memo to you on April 12, ‘46 with an attachment saying, "I thought you should have these in connection with the subject matter of our conversation." And the document attached, which had been issued in

[97]

1945, was in regard to the preparation and submission of memorandums, when the President was expected to make some decision about some matter. Do you recall anything of this, what occasioned that?

LOCKE: No, this is a problem that all people in high posts in Government have. For instance, when I went over to England in the fall of 1943 with Donald Nelson, I spent a couple of days acquainting myself with the operations of the War Cabinet and one interesting thing that I learned was that Churchill had given orders that no decision was to be considered a decision from him unless it was in writing, because it was so easy for people to go in and talk to him and he might imply agreement and they would come out and say "The Prime Minister agrees with me, so this is his approval and we'll go ahead." And I think doubtless Mr. Truman had the same problem. He might want to be nice or polite or

[98]

indicate sympathy or broad agreement and the next thing you might know, why, the person involved would be announcing that this had the approval of the President. It's just simple good sense and good administration to require that any decisions from him be in writing. I agree with it.

FUCHS: There was a similar sort of thing in regard to the Hurley resignation. I believe he had just talked to the President and the President seemed to feel he was going to return to China and then he turned around and went to some dinner and talked to the press. Do you recall that?

LOCKE: I don't recall it too well, but I have the recollection that shortly after he came out of the White House, that he talked to the press, or perhaps as soon as he came out of the Presidents office he let go.

FUCHS: You didn't have any subsequent conversations

[99]

with Hurley about this?

LOCKE: Not at that time, no. I did see him occasionally afterwards. And, of course, he wrote a book which I presume you have. I've got it at home.

FUCHS: Lippmann wrote about December '45 that Hurley's contention was that the career men, our China experts, gave the Communists every reason to believe that they did not need to make the necessary concessions to Chiang, whereas the career men's contention undoubtedly would be that Mr. Hurley led Chiang to believe that he did not need to make enough concessions. Do you think Lippmann was right or do you think that's simplifying it?

LOCKE: I don't know. I thought a lot of Pat Hurley and I thought he was doing a very patient, constructive job over there. And I also have always felt that he was interfered with to some extent by certain foreign service officers who were

[100]

trying to undercut him.

FUCHS: Did you work with Bill Hillman?

LOCKE: Some, yes.

FUCHS: How did he come into the picture?

LOCKE: Well, I think through David Noyes, because subsequently he and David worked very closely together on writing of the Memoirs of the President. I met him through David Noyes.

FUCHS: After you became Special Assistant I believe you had an assistant, Robert M. Kerr. Who was he?

LOCKE: He was an older man who had been, I think, a management consultant. He was a general assistant to me.

FUCHS: One of the scholars suggested I ask you why you never took a position on the White House staff and I said you had.

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LOCKE: Well, I was on the White House staff, really, from the beginning of Truman's presidency. I had my office in the State Department building, as part of the White House officers were over there, and my appointments were directly by the President.

FUCHS: In 1946, Nelson Rockefeller, in congratulating you about your appointment, wrote he would never forget the "quiet, efficient way in which you smoothed the way for the Mexican program." What was meant by that?

LOCKE: The Mexicans were needing and asking for a lot of help in their economic development towards the end of the war and I got a mission organized in the War Production Board, and Jacobson was one of the men on it as a matter of fact, and sent them down to Mexico to work with the Mexicans in developing sort of a national development plan. And this was something which Nelson

[102]

Rockefeller's office was very anxious to have done the Mission did a fine job and wrote an awfully good report, which subsequently was the basis for a good deal of assistance to Mexico.

FUCHS: In dealing with the CAB foreign routes, was Mr. Truman on top of that, so to speak? Did he have a fair knowledge of what the problems were?

LOCKE: Oh, yes, and it was a special pleasure working with him on this, because I found that his ideas and mine coalesced or were very close, and my reactions were his reactions, and it was a very gratifying kind of work to be in because of this. It really centered around whether or not we should have a chosen instrument, which was Pan American's approach, or whether we should have competition. I'm a great believer in competition and I recommended, I remember, to the President that he put Braniff Airways into South

[103]

America to wake it. I remember that I recommended putting Eastern Airlines into Puerto Rico and he accepted it. Now, this was a particularly interesting relationship with Mr. Truman because Eastern had applied for that route, Capital Airlines had applied, and I guess some others; and when I went over to see the President in his office to tell him that I thought Eastern should be put into Puerto Rico and why -- Mr. Truman, you know, was very decisive and indeed loved making decisions -- he listened and agreed and picked up his pen to start to sign the letter that would confirm this. It was a letter, I think, that was to go to the Civil Aeronautics Board and I said, "Now, wait a minute, Mr. President. This is a very important move, and I know you're busy and all, but I really think you ought to read this."

He read it and he said, "That's all right with me, Eddie."

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And I said, "Thank you, sir, but..." And he started to sign again. And I said, "Now, wait a minute, Mr. President, excuse me, but if you do this and put Eastern Airlines into Puerto Rico, I want you to know that you're going to have a very irate group of Southern Congressmen and Senators in here raising the very devil with you because you're not putting Capital Airlines into Puerto Rico."

And he thought about it a minute and he said, "That's all right, I can handle them, Eddie; don't you worry about that. I'll take care of it."

So, he signed it. Well, sure enough, a week or two later, the whole group of them were in there, complaining loudly and bitterly. He heard them out and he said this is the decision, and this is why he made it, and this was the way it was going to be. That was that. But you always knew -- this is why he was such a delight to work for -- he was always accessible;

[105]

he was never temperamental; he was always decisive; and if he gave you a commitment, you could be sure that he would always back you up. He was the best boss I have ever had.

FUCHS: There was some mention in the press during this period about whether the White House should choose a carrier; in other words, should it only be consulting with the CAB about foreign affairs implications but the CAB should be the designating agency.

LOCKE: By statute the President had to approve overseas route assignments by the CAB. I don't think in such a circumstance that the President should just blindly follow what the CAB recommended. I think it was not only his right, but his duty to study the issues and come to his own conclusions and if he differed, to overrule the CAB and instruct them what to do, which he did. Sometimes he approved; sometimes he did not.

[106]

FUCHS: One matter that seemed to be brought to your attention was the report of the Strategic Bombing Survey regarding the atomic bomb.

LOCKE: Yes.

FUCHS: Why was that brought into your bailiwick, so to speak? Do you recall anything?

LOCKE: Well, I suppose because there were two strategic bombing surveys, one of Europe and one of Japan, and I having been in War Production and having been over to both Europe and in the Far East during the war, it was not unnatural that he should give it to me, and I suppose in part because it was a civilian-led survey, and I in turn was a civilian. It was interesting and useful work that these survey teams did.

FUCHS: Do you recall any particular problem that arose in that connection?

LOCKE: No, I don't. These were well done jobs.

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We had some tremendous talent in those missions.

FUCHS: Well, action was initiated for a bill in 1946 to establish an Under Secretary of State for Economic Affairs and I think Mr. Truman gave the job to you to work on. I wonder if you had any recollections about that?

LOCKE: Not particularly about that one. I had a number of assignments up on the Hill, to get treaties approved and bills through and that kind of thing. I remember I had to get one of the air treaties through, I think it was the approval of the treaty creating the International Air Transport Association.

FUCHS: Not the International Air Convention

LOCKE: Something like that. I had the job of getting that treaty through the Senate.

FUCHS: Who did you work with on that on the Hill?

[108]

LOCKE: Well, I worked quite a bit with Senator Brewster from Maine; I worked with Les Biffle, who was Secretary of the Senate at that time; and a number of others I don't recall in particular, but we got it through.

FUCHS: Were you giving advance notice of the Wallace speech in September '46, in regard to foreign affairs?

LOCKE: No.

FUCHS: Did you ever discuss it with Mr. Truman?

LOCKE: Not particularly. I heard references by him about it at times. You see, Mr. Truman used to be very kind and he'd take a number of us off on weekends with him on the Presidential yacht, or down to Key West on a vacation, and the atmosphere used to be very informal; but generally he didn't talk very much about these things. He'd make comments about this or that

[109]

person occasionally but he really wanted to relax with us.

FUCHS: You sent him a draft of a speech that he was going to deliver before the UN in October, 1946, I don't think it was delivered as drafted. Do you have any recollections of that assignment?

LOCKE: Vivid recollections.

FUCHS: Care to talk about it?

LOCKE: Sure. Bob Carr and I, and Dave Noyes may have been in on it, I don't remember, but it was mainly Bob Carr and I worked up this speech, and took it over to Mr. Truman; and he liked it, but he said held have to refer it to the State Department. We had a meeting in his office one day for a half an hour or so, and I think Dean Acheson was there -- wasn't he Secretary of State at that time?

FUCHS: If it was '46, it was still James Byrnes,

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LOCKE: Well, Byrnes wasn't there, but Acheson was.

FUCHS: He was Under Secretary.

LOCKE: Well, I believe Acheson was Under Secretary and he was there. We had quite a debate about the virtues of their speech versus our speech, and how our speech was more to reach the people of the world and the State Department speech was a more distant, formal, somewhat stereotyped affair, not well written. It ended up with Mr. Truman using only one paragraph out of our speech. Listening to the speech later on television we were gratified to see that this was the one passage in his speech which brought spontaneous and substantial applause.

FUCHS: Can you recollect what that particular paragraph expressed?

LOCKE: Yes, it dealt with the prospects and need for peace, and it made headlines in the New York

[111]

Times and other papers. I think you can spot it easily enough from these two drafts.

FUCHS: Yes. Did you do much speechwriting for the President?

LOCKE: Well, Bob Carr was the principal writer. We worked as a very good team together. He did the main writing as a rule. I would do a lot of fact gathering and editing, but there were occasions when I would do some of the writing and he would do the editing; but mainly, oh, ninety-five percent of the time, he did the main writing, and I would do some of the other aspects of it. And we supplemented each other, worked very well together.

FUCHS: I believe the triumvirate, Carr, Locke and Noyes, prepared a suggested radio address for the President to deliver on the eve of the election in 1946. There's a copy in your

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papers. Apparently, it wasn't delivered, Do you remember that?

LOCKE: I don't remember much about that, no, I don't remember too much about the speech, or too much about why it wasn't delivered.

FUCHS: In November, 1946, you wrote Dave Noyes who was, by then, back in California, praising him for his contribution toward the last election, in speechwriting, I assume.

LOCKE: I don't remember that either.

FUCHS: You said, "I know that the President, too, got a real lift out of what you said to him in his office that memorable afternoon." Could you fill that in at this stage?

LOCKE: I don't remember. [At this point Mr. Locke read copies of the exchange of letters between him and David Noyes and the comment that followed referred to those letters. Locke to Noyes, Nov. 9, 1946 and Noyes to Locke, Nov. 11, 1946, Papers of Edwin A. Locke, Jr., folder "Special Asst. to the President, Official, May-Nov. 1946," Truman Library.]

That reflects my aversion to mediocrity. Particularly in the Presidential staff I think there ought to have been some of

[113]

the best talent that existed in the country and he wasn't getting it; it was a handicap to him and a handicap to the country. Dave expressed it extremely well here in saying that the President "is unable to overcome a preference to work and play with 'average' people."

FUCHS: I noticed the newspapers, when you were reappointed, said that there was some attempt to upgrade the staff in the White House, and they complimented the President, in effect, upon appointing you. Did you sort of subscribe to the "Missouri gang" theory?

LOCKE: No, I didn't. It was an admirable quality in Mr. Truman, and also a handicap, this devotion to his friends.

FUCHS: You did feel that there was sort of a Missouri gang?

LOCKE: Yes, but this was somewhat incidental. I didn't mind where the gang came from, Missouri or anywhere else. What I minded was their

[114]

mediocrity, which is mentioned in this correspondence.

FUCHS: You think then that if there hadn't been certain friends in Missouri whom the President placed in these positions, that he still might have surrounded himself with mediocrity?

LOCKE: Friends from somewhere else, certainly. He was an extraordinary man, but I felt he needed extraordinary help.

FUCHS: In the end of '46 you decided to leave the Government.

LOCKE: Yes.

FUCHS: In August of ‘51 you wrote the President that you'd been out to the Middle East on further trips and that you had been placed on the board of American University at Beirut, and that someday if he had a minute you had some thoughts about the U.S. and the Middle East that you'd

[115]

like to go over with him. He said that he'd be glad to see you sometime. This was August, '51. Was it out of this that your appointment grew?

LOCKE: It might very well have been.

FUCHS: You have no vivid memories of this?

LOCKE: No, but in the State Department, George McGhee was then Assistant Secretary of State in charge of the Near East and Africa, and George was an old friend of mine.

FUCHS: Where had you met him?

LOCKE: During the war, I guess. So, it was not unnatural for this appointment to come out of George McGhee and the President. It came up in, I think, November of that year.

FUCHS: That's when you were appointed as Personal Representative of the Secretary of State?

[116]

LOCKE: That's right.

FUCHS: To go back a little bit, there was a report in draft form, which was really the first report of the Council of Economic Advisers, and you and Mr. Clifford seemed quite concerned about it, according to some documents in your papers, in December '46. You said that the entire report, both in content and expression was mediocre. Do you recall anything about that?

LOCKE: Not particularly, no. It's just one more example as it were, of what we have been talking about here.

FUCHS: Mr. Truman appointed you when you resigned in 1947 as a consultant without compensation, at ten dollars per day subsistence while serving away from home. Were you ever called upon between January '47 and the time when you returned in November 1951?

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LOCKE: Yes, although I never put in any bill for it. I did a year or so later go over to Saudi Arabia. I think there's a report in the files somewhere. I took some messages to King Ibn Saud from Truman and reported back to him in writing. Is it in your papers there somewhere?

FUCHS: What I saw were documents relating to gifts that you brought back from Saudi Arabia, but I may have, in my haste, missed a more substantive report.

LOCKE: There's an extensive letter.

FUCHS: Was this a trip that you were taking for personal reasons?

LOCKE: This was a purely private trip and before I went I stopped in to see the President and I said, "I'm going to be in Saudi Arabia and I'll be seeing the King. Is there anything that you'd like me to do while I'm over there?"

[118]

"Yes," he said, "I'd like you to take this message." And he detailed certain things he wanted me to say. So, when I saw him I wrote all this down -- I had a fellow with me who spoke in Arabic and did the interpreting -- and sent it back to the President. It must be in my papers somewhere, my copy or his copy or both.

FUCHS: I'm sure it is. Were there any other occasions that you recall? Were you consulted about any programs?

LOCKE: Not any in particular at the moment that I can recall.

FUCHS: About the Truman Doctrine proposal?

LOCKE: No.

FUCHS: The Marshall Plan?

LOCKE: No.

FUCHS: Did you ever discuss economic problems in

[119]

Any of these areas with Will Clayton?

LOCKE: I knew Will Clayton, but I didn’t have any close association with him officially.

FUCHS: Is there anything in regard to your work on reorganization of the Government that stands out in your memory?

LOCKE: No.

FUCHS: Any particular problems that arose?

LOCKE: No, I think that problems were more in getting these plans through Congress, that is, so that the Congress wouldn’t veto them. I don’t have any particular comments. It wasn’t one of the most interesting jobs I had.

FUCHS: Did you come in touch with John Steelman on occasion?

LOCKE: On occasion.

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FUCHS: What were your impressions of Dr. Steelman?

LOCKE: Well, he was a good man, a good, steady, reliable, efficient fellow. Of course, his specialty was labor, but he used to work on a great many other things as well. He was a good man.

FUCHS: Did you think the President was wise in relying on him in these other areas, too?

LOCKE: Yes.

FUCHS: Your appointment to go to the Near East came out and you were given the personal rank of ambassador at that time.

LOCKE: Yes.

FUCHS: Did you feel that the mutual security funds were adequate when you undertook that?

LOCKE: Yes, I felt the funds were adequate. This

[121]

was the case that I mentioned where Mr. Truman sent me over there and said, "Eddie, I want you to get action on these technical and economic aid programs." And I tried to get things moving. Of course, I made the State Department uncomfortable. Those were the rather earlier days of those programs and of Point 4, and some of the appointments our Government made were excellent and some were quite unfortunate. I was assigned to the seven Arab states and Israel, as well as to the Refugee Aid Program. It was a fascinating but frustrating job. In Lebanon, for example, I had an ambassador's rank, and the head of our diplomatic mission there was only a minister. The State Department was still sending to areas of the world, such as the Middle East, second rate people; and as you saw at luncheon today, I have a very pretty and attractive wife, and get along quite well with people myself. She and I immediately got access to people and places that our diplomatic

[122]

missions often couldn't. For instance, I spent several weekends in the private house of the President of Lebanon. Our minister couldn't get anywhere near him except on an official basis. I'd go up there and spend a weekend in his mountain lodge and sit around while we had interesting entertainment, and be accepted, almost as a member of his family. Well, this created, inevitably, certain tensions of jealousy, and so forth. Of course, I could travel all over the area all the time. The ministers were pretty well limited to their own particular countries, which, for the most part, were quite small.

The State Department is not really very well equipped to handle an operational program, and it’s not psychologically very well disposed either in that direction. And so I had my hands full trying to get this economic and technical aid program going, both in individual countries

[123]

and yet with some consideration for the aspects of the region as a whole. I gradually found myself less and less in harmony with the State Department. In the first place, they were getting their feedback, their reporting, primarily from the contacts of their people with the upper crust. Although I knew these people too and used to see quite a bit of them, I also made a particular point of getting out among the people, including extensive visits to the refugee camps. The result was that I was sending back quite different information to the State Department than its own Foreign Service officers. It was particularly embarrassing, because it meant, in effect, that many of their policies were wrong, because they were based on false premises. I wrote a series of articles in the fall of '52 for one of the American newspaper chains, and I also gave a long, one hour speech in French to a Lebanese club, both of which were just

[124]

barely within the bounds of what one could get away with, I came back on consultation at this time and agreed with Henry Byroade, who was then Assistant Secretary, to disagree with the State Department and to part company amicably. I saw the President about this and he couldn't have been nicer or more understanding. Well, actually, I stayed on until after the election of Eisenhower, which came in November '52, you remember. But at about that time, I saw the President and told him this wasn't working out and why and, as I say, he understood and sympathized and so we disengaged, the State Department and I, without any public ruckus between us, Ever since I've had very good relations with the State Department and have done a job for him occasionally, including one for Mr. Kennedy when I was the so-called public member of a survey mission to certain areas of Africa.

[125]

FUCHS: There was a charge made that aid to the Near East was heavily weighted in favor of the Jewish.

LOCKE: Of the Israelis?

FUCHS: Yes.

LOCKE: Well, I don't believe governmentally it was. Of course, there was a lot more private aid going to Israel and the Israeli government than was the case with the Arab countries. But you had to balance the aid going to all the Arab countries against Israel; and also take into consideration that a couple of the Arab countries, notably Saudi Arabia and Iraq, were immensely rich in oil and were getting substantial oil royalties, No, I don't think that was so much the problem, although the Arabs used to criticize us about it. It was more the political problem of the Israelis driving out the Arabs from

[126]

certain parts of Palestine and taking over. And of course, there was very deep resentment on that score.

FUCHS: Your appointment to the Advisory Commission of the United Nations Relief and Works Agency sort of gave you a two-fold mission over there. How did you separate the two?

LOCKE: There was no conflict between them. They were quite compatible and quite closely related, and of course the United States provided seventy percent of the money on which this United Nations agency operated. Here again, we were plagued with very mediocre administration, and in some quarters of this agency with actual corruption, of the most despicable sort: putting sand and rocks into wheat and selling it to the UN agencies and so on. Nobody would touch this because it was difficult and explosive, until I came along, It was another area of frustration and difficulty. Very few

[127]

people visited many of these refugee camps, I think I went to every refugee camp that the UN agency had. The agency officials used to try to discourage me from going. They said it was dangerous. I said, "I just want to understand this clearly. Are you telling the representative of the United States Government on the Advisory Commission to the UNRWA that he cannot visit these camps, because if you are saying so, I would like to have that in writing." Of course, this scared them off. Then I used to find that they would always warn the camp ahead of time that I was coming and everything in the camp would be all spruced up and everybody putting on a show for me. Then I had to arrange to go to them unannounced. I'd just slip out of town and appear at a camp. I always used to have some round table discussions in a big circle with the muktahs, the Arab leaders, and we had some very high pitched exchanges. But from this

[128]

I got a very true and accurate feeling of the attitude of the Arab refugees, which the State Department had never really gotten before or paid much attention to. That is why some of the Department's ideas turned out to be not based on reality. It was very interesting.

FUCHS: The one hundred and sixty million dollars of mutual security agency funds appropriated for the technical aid and assistance in the Near East, was that in the true sense of the word, Point 4 aid?

LOCKE: Yes, Point 4 was really technical help but there was economic help in there, too, for building dams, and things of that sort. In other words, in my job, I didn't have full authority over the individual country programs.

[129]

Mine was a coordinating function and it was rather difficult for me to get things done at the pace that they should have been done.

FUCHS: I believe when you departed for Lebanon it was reported you'd said that you expected the job to last two years, which would take it up to about November '53. I wonder if at that time by any chance you expected Mr. Truman to run again? Or did you think the job would just carry you over under a new administration?

LOCKE: No, I just felt that that was the only responsible way to approach such a job. You can't go over there for a few months and expect to really get anywhere. So, I thought this was a two year job, but even before Eisenhower's election it just was not working out. I don't

[130]

think it was in the cards for it to work out. I recommended certain programs and certain policy modifications which were carefully based on reality, but they were too far from what the State Department then thought and believed. I don't think subsequent events in the Middle East have been much of a credit to the State Department's policies.

FUCHS: Why did you select Lebanon for your headquarters?

LOCKE: It was a very central place. International airlines came in there and it was very accessible to all other Arab capitals. It had excellent facilities of all sorts, including a modern hospital, It was a very natural place to be great freedom of entry and exit.

FUCHS: This was a matter left up to you, as to where you had your headquarters?

[131]

LOCKE: Well, I don't really recollect. There was no disagreement on it.

FUCHS: You had correspondence with Arthur Gardiner in the State Department. Was he a liaison man?

LOCKE: No, he was in the economic affairs end of it and these technical aid programs and so forth were handled under him.

FUCHS: Was he, in your opinion, a capable man?

LOCKE: He was an ex-businessman, who sincerely worked at his job but who didn't make the best of his opportunities to be of service.

FUCHS: Did you have a relationship with W. Averell Harriman?

[132]

LOCKE: Well, I've known him over the years, starting back in the early war days, and then I saw him in Moscow. He was Ambassador to Moscow on .our first visit there. And I've seen him from time to time since, and still do see him occasionally. He had no particular connection with my Middle Eastern mission.

FUCHS: Did you have any discussions with the Secretary of State or with Acheson about the mission?

LOCKE: Yes, to some extent. I've known Dean Acheson for many years. He's a brilliant man and one of the best advocates I've ever heard. I had a conversation with him one day -- he, of course was essentially interested more in Europe than anything else -- and I remember his saying to me, I think I was lunching with him, he said,

[133]

"You know, I just don't understand what's going on in Syria at all, I just can't understand it,"

I say this not in disparagement of Acheson but as being representative of the State Department at the time. The Syrians were peculiar people who just didn't behave like Westerners and who could not be judged and interpreted by Western standards.

FUCHS: Mainly, you felt that the failure of the assistance in the Near East was the lack of providing capital funds for projects that would benefit the...

LOCKE: No, I wouldn't express it that way. I think the problem was more a matter of inadequate people in the technical and economic aid missions, and also to some extent in the diplomatic missions. They weren't providing the initiative and the leadership that was necessary; it was to be sure a difficult situation, but

[134]

the needed action programs were recommended and put into operation much too slowly and frequently ineptly managed.

FUCHS: I think that's about all I have unless there's something you feel should be added.

LOCKE: No, but if you think of anything at any time, don't hesitate to drop me a line and stimulate me with excerpts or something and I'll do the best I can; or if you get questions from students that you think ought to be answered for your own records, I'll do my best.

FUCHS: Thank you, sir.

Acheson, Dean, 110, 132-133
Airline route cases, international, 92, 102-105
American Production Mission in China. See American War Production Mission in China
American War Production Mission in China, 1944-45, 48-50, 55-90
Arab refugee relief program, 121-122, 126-127
Arab states, 120-121, 125-126
Aviation, 102-105

Berk, Harry, 70-71, 92
Biffle, Leslie L. 108
Braniff Airways, 102-103
Brewster, Owen, 108
Budget, Bureau of the, 95, 96
Byroade, Henry, 124

Candee, Edward, 62-63
Capital Airlines, 103, 104
Carr, Albert Z., 26, 32-33, 60, 69, 72, 92, 109, 111
Catton, Bruce, 24-25
Chiang Kai-shek, 56-58, 60-61, 82, 89, 99
Chiang Kai-shek, Madam, 60-61
China:

• civil war in, 1945-49,
  • 65-66, 76-78, 81, 87-89
    communism in, 61-62, 65, 66 76-78, 87-89
    economic aid to, World War II, 50-51
    Nelson, Donald, personal representative of President Roosevelt to, 52-53
    post World War II economic development, plans for, 58-67
    procurement needs from U.S., World War II, 46
    U.S. policy regarding, 1945-46, 76-78, 81-83, 87-89
• Chinese War Production Board, 51
  Churchill, Winston S., 97
  Civil Aeronautics Board, 92, 102-103, 105
  Clark, Charles P., 15
  Council of National Defense, Advisory Commission, 2, 3-4

  Davies, Ralph K., 45
  "Dollar-a-year" men, 28-32

  Eastern Airlines, 103-104
  Eberstadt, Ferdinand, 40-41

  Foreign aid:

  • Arab states, 125-126
    Israel, 125
    Middle East, 121-134
  Foreign Service, 123
  Formosa, 89
  Forrestal, James V, 20
  Fulton, Hugh, 8, 11, 14-15

  Gardiner, Arthur, 131
  Geneva, Wisconsin, 92
  Greece, 84-85

  Halley, Rudolph, 8, 15
  Harriman, Averell, 131-132
  Hill, Clifford, 39
  Hillman, William, 100
  Hurley, Patrick J.:

  • China, ambassador to, 52-53, 58-62, 75-77, 98-99
    China, resignation as Ambassador to, 78-79, 98-99
    Roosevelt, Franklin D., relationship with, 53
    State Department, policy toward China, criticism of, 76-77
    Truman, Harry S., differences with, 53-55, 58-59, 64, 98

  Ibn Saud, King of Saudi Arabia, 117
  Israel, 121, 125-126

  Jacobson, James A,, 67-68, 101

  Kennedy, John F., 124
  Kerry, Robert M., 100
  Krug, Julius A. (Cap), 37-38
  Kuomintang. See China

  Lebanon, 121-122, 129, 130
  Lee, Michael, 60, 61
  Locke, Edwin A., Jr.:

  • Advisory Commission to the UN Relief and Works Agency for Palestine, member of, 126-127
    American War Production Mission in China, head of, 69-90
    Arab Refugee program, critical of, 126-127
    Arab states and Israel, coordinator of economic and technical aid to, 120-134
    biographical data, 1-5
    Carr, A.Z., proposal for averting civil war in China and, 69
    Chiang Kai-shek, negotiations with, 60-61
    "dollar-a-year men", investigation of appointments to government positions, World War II, 28-32
    Economic Advisor to the government of China, as, 72-73
    England, trip to, 1943, 77
    Fulton, Hugh, evaluation of as chief counsel of the Truman Committee, 14-15
    Ibn Saud, bearer of message to from President Truman, 117-118
    liaison official between War Production Board and Truman Committee, 5
    MacArthur, Gen. Douglas, conference with, 1945, 71-72
    Mexico, U.S. economic mission, organized by, 101-102
    Nelson, Donald, as assistant to in the War Production Board, 3
    Nelson, Donald, evaluation of as an administrator, 16-19
    Personal Representative of the Secretary of State, appointed, Nov., 1951, 115
    Presidential speechwriter, as, 111
    Saudi Arabia, trip to, 117
    Soviet Purchasing Commission, negotiations with members of a World Wax II, 42-45
    Soviet Union, trips to with Donald Nelson, 1943 and 1944, 44-45, 47-48
    Special Assistant to the President, duties as, 91-92, 100-109
    State Department technical and economic programs in Middle East, criticism of, 121-124
    Truman, Harry S.:
    • association with as liaison officer between Truman Committee and WPB, 5-11
      first acquaintance with, 5
      relationship with, 102-105
      report to on China mission, De., 1945, 87-88
      special assistant to, appointed Mar,, 1946, 91-92, 94
      UN speech, Oct. 23, 1946, helped edit, 109-110
      present at swearing in ceremonies, 1945, 35-36
    War Production Board, duties as an official of, 5
    White House staff members, mediocrity of scored by, 113-114, 116

  MacArthur, Gen. Douglas, 71, 72
  McGhee, George, 115
  Marshall, George C., 65-66, 75, 79-80
  Marshall mission to China, 65-66
  Meader, George, 8
  Mexican American Commission for Economic Cooperation, 101-102
  Mexico, 101-102
  Middle East, 114-115, 117-118, 121-122
  Mikoyan, Anastas I., 68
  "Missouri gang", 113-114
  Molotov, Vyacheslav M., 68, 76-77

  Navy Department and War Production Board, relations between, 22-23
  Nelson, Donald:

  • American War Production Mission in China, resignation as head of, 62, 63, 70
    Director of Purchases, Council of National Defense, 2
    drinking habits, 49
    Greece, suggestion that U.S. economic mission be sent to, 1945, 84-85
    Locke, Edwin A., appoints as liaison between War Production Board and Truman Committee, 5-6
    military services, relationship with, 20-21
    Soviet Union, trips to, World War 11, 44-45, 47-48
    Stalin, J.V,, interview with, 1944, 47-48
    subordinates, relationship with, 40-41
    Truman, Harry S., relationship with, 25-26
    War Production Board, as chairman of, 12-14, 16-19
    War Production Board, direction of, criticized by Truman committee, 12-13
    War Production Board, executive assistants to, 33
    Wilson, Charles E., differences with, 41-42
  Noyes, David M., 26, 32-35, 37, 38-39, 75, 100, 109

  O'Brien, John Lord, 7
  Office of Production Management, 3, 86

  Pan American World Airways, 102-103
  Patterson, Robert P., 20
  Petroleum Administration for War, 46
  Phelps Dodge Copper Corp., 4
  Point Four program in the Middle East, 121, 128-129
  Press, 19-20, 23
  Puerto Rico, 103, 104

  Reconversion after World War 11, 41-42
  Refugee aid program, Arabs, 121, 123-124
  Reorganization of Government Departments, 92, 95-96, 119
  Rockefeller, Nelson A., 101-102
  Roosevelt, Franklin D.:

  • government officials removal, method of, 51-52
    Hurley, Patrick J., relationship with, 53
    Nelson, Donald, appointment to War Production Mission to China, 1944, 48
    Stettinius, Edward R,, appointment as Secretary of State, 86-87
  Ross, Chaxles G., 94-95
  Russia. See Union of Soviet Socialist Republics

  Saudi Arabia, 117-118
  Society of Independent Motion Picture Producers, 75
  Soong, T.V., 57
  Soviet Union. See Union of Soviet Socialist Republics
  Stalin, Joseph V., 47-48
  State Department:

  • China, policy in regard to, 1945-46, 75, 76-77
    Middle East, political and economic programs in, 121-126
    Middle East, policies in the, 127-128
    Sino-American affairs during World War II, role in, 83
    UN speech, President Truman, Oct, 23, 1946, preparation of, 109-110
  Steelman, John R., 120
  Stettinius, Edward R., 86-87
  Stilwell, Gen. Joseph W,, 58, 82
  Strategic Bombing Survey, 106
  Supply, Priorities, and Allocations Board, 3-4
  Supreme Economic Council (China), 58-61
  Syria, 133

  Truman Harry S.

  • as an administrator, 96-98, 102-105
    Chinese communists, instructions to E. A. Locke, Jr., concerning visiting areas occupied by, 71
    decision maker, as a, 104-105
    drafting of speeches for, 109-112
    Hurley, Patrick J., accepts resignation of as U.S. Ambassador to China, 78-79
    Hurley, Patrick J., differences with, 53-55, 58-59, 64, 98
    Locke, Edwin A.:
    • appoints administrator of economic and technical aid to Israel and the Arab states, 120-121
      association with as chairman of the Truman Committee, 5-11
      first acquaintance with, 5
      King Ibn Saud of Saudi Arabia, carries message to from, 117-118
      relationship with, 102-105
    Marshall,, George C., appointment as ambassador to China by, 79-81
    Nelson, Donald, accepts resignation of as head of American Production Mission to China, 70
    Nelson, Donald, relationship with, 25-26
    swearing in ceremonies as President, 1945, 35-36
    speech at opening of UN General Assembly, Oct. 23, 1946, 109-110
    temperament, 105
    War Production Board, relationship with, 16-19
    White House staff, appointment of Missouri friends to, 113-114
  Truman Committee;
  • "dollar-a-year men" appointments, investigation of, 28-32
    Nelson, Donald, criticism of work as chairman of the War Production Board, 12-13
    rayon versus cotton cord for tires, hearing on, 9
    War Production Board, relationship with, 5-11, 25-26

  Union of Soviet Socialist Republics:

  economic aid to, World War II,
  • 42-45, 47-48
    furnishing of supplies to, World War II, 42-45
    Greece, postwar policy toward, 84-85
  United Nations:
  • headquarters, 92
    Relief and Works Agency, Palestine refugees in the Near East, 126-127
    Truman, President H.S., speech at, Oct. 23, 1946, 109-110

  War Department and the War Production Board, relations between, 19-23
  War Production Board:

  • armed services, relationship with, 19-23, 24-25
    and "dollar-a-year men" appointments, 28-32
    Mexico, economic mission to, 101-102
    Nelson, Donald, administration of under, 12-14, 16-19
    Nelson, Donald, as chairman of, 3 , 5-6
    officials, friction among, 38-42
    reconversion, and the problem of, 41-42
    Truman Committee, relationship with, 5-11, 26
    Truman, Harry S,, relationship with, 16-19
  Watson, Thomas J , 92
  Wedemeyer, Gen. Albert C., 82-83, 88
  White House staff, 112-114
  Wilson, Charles E,, 38-41
  Wong Wen hao, 57