When America's quiet and determined Secretary of State stepped into his office on March 3, he added new distinction to a career that has already made him one of the most Ronoured men ever to hold public office in the United States. For Cordell Hull had served in his post for seven years and 364 days—breaking by a day the record set by William Henry Seward 72 years ago, states the "Christian Science Monitor." Only three times before have men served as Secretaries of State through nearly two terms and perhaps only Secretary Seward, who held the post during the dark days of the Civil War and reconstruction, had to face the trials that have gone with the job during the first two terms of President Roosevelt's administration.
While the Secretary owes his new distinction io President Roosevelt's election to a third term, it is not at all certain that Secretary Hull wouldn't have had the same honour had Mr. Willkie won last November, for the Republican candidate is known to have intended to ask the Secretary to continue in his post during the next four years. It is thought possible that the gravity of the times might have induced Mr. Hull to accept such as unprecedented invitation.
Soft of speech, this man from the Tennessee mountains has shown unrelenting and almost religious intensity in the pursuit of two goals—the preservation of world order through the observation of international agreements and the extension of world trade through a gradual elimination of the barriers that hinder it.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.