Show Round Merry-Go-Round By Drew Pearson and Robert S. S Allen W WASHINGTON The The entire British empire was set just a bit agog last winter when the Australian minister in Washington announced that Justice Felix Frankfurter had advised him to take a post in the British cabinet The Australian Aus Aus- Australian government was especially agog and its prime minister said so publicly To a lot of other people also it seemed queer that a justice of the U. U S. S supreme court should be dipping his fingers Into affairs of the British empire But to those the scenes in Washington Washing Washing- ton this was no surprise at all For today as the supreme court winds up its current term it isa isa is isa a fact that second only to the president himself Justice Felix Frankfurter has more to do with guiding our destinies of war than anyone anyon in Washington He does this through having put his own men in three key cabinet posts through being on Intimate intimate in in- in terms with the British Ambassador Lord Halifax and the Chinese Foreign Minister T T T. T V V. V V Soong and through having one of his old students students stu stu- dents Dean Acheson sit at the right hand of Secretary of State Cordell Hull HuH Uncle Interned by Hitler In addition to all reasons for being zealous about the war Frankfurter has special personal incentives He was born in Austria a country taken in one gulp by Hitler And when he swallowed swallowed lowed it Hitler threw Frankfurters Frankfurter's aged uncle into a concentration camp Several times his friends have suggested that thata a supreme court justice should not meddle in the executive branch of the government that the constitution created the judiciary as a check checkon on the executive not a collaborator that he should not be quite so open in d dashing shing back and forth between the British embassy and the war department However nothing has daunted Frankfurter The three key cabinet members indebted to Frankfurter for their jobs are Attorney General Francis Biddle Secretary of War Henry L. L Stimson Stimson son and Secretary of the Navy Frank Knox Knox was urged on Roosevelt by Frankfurter as a great political stroke to swing the Republicans cans into line and also the middle west The president president dent according to White House intimates did not want Knox at first Biddle always h has s been a of Frankfurters Frankfurter's Frankfurters Frankfurter's Frank Frank- furter's but has cooled toward him recently remarking remarking re re- re- re marking to friends that he was too indiscreet to be trusted However Frankfurters Frankfurter's greatest influence Is in the war department There two close and very dear friends are the secretary of war and undersecretary undersecretary under under- secretary of war while two of his students John J. J McCloy and Robert Lovett are assistant secretaries secretaries secretaries sec sec- of war Frankfurter and Stimson have been Intimate friends for 30 years When Stimson was district attorney of New York in 1906 he brought Frankfurter Frankfurter Frank Frank- furter in as his assistant Later when Stimson became secretary of war under Taft he gave Frankfurter a job in the war department During During Dur Dur- ing the last war both men at first were in the judge advocate generals general's office of the reserve corps Then when Stimson became secretary of state under Hoover Frankfurter staffed most of the high ranking offices in the state department for him No Love on Court Despite all these activities Felix manages to spend some time at the supreme court though his relations there are not the happiest His closest friend strangely enough Is the courts court's only remaining conservative Owen J. J J Roberts who has become especially Intimate since Frankfurter Frank Frank- furter got him the Pearl Harbor assignment Frankfurter also gets on reasonably well with Harlan F F. Stone whose appointment as chief justice he engineered with Roosevelt He is also on good terms with Justice Robert H H. Jackson who would like to be chief justice after Stone retires and Is fully aware that Felix could help get the position for him But with Justices William O O. Douglas Hugo L L. Black and Frank Murphy Frankfurter has been engaged in so many backstage fights that that they merely keep up the amenities l t |