FOREIGN RELATIONS: Nelson Goes

After five years in the Government. Donald Marr Nelson resigned this week. In 1940, fresh from the management of Sears, Roebuck & Co., he symbolized the nation's first groping efforts toward war production when he became purchasing agent for the old National Defense Council. He stayed on through SPAB, OPM and WPB, spent his last year of Government service on special presidential missions. Now he was off for a rest, with a pat on the back from President Truman.

Don Nelson's last mission was to set up a WPB in China. This work would go on, under direction of Nelson's assistant—young (34), Harvard-educated Edwin A. Locke Jr. China's WPB was now functioning smoothly; it was more streamlined and less hampered by red tape than Washington's WPB had ever been. It had brought Chinese industry and government together for the first time. It had taught Chinese industrialists much of Western know-how. In its own small way it would help shorten the stretch drive against Japan, and aid in Chinese post-war recovery.