Army & Navy: New Under Secretary

A Brigadier General in the reserves who had found the Army "a little hard to take at first" last week found himself in one of the Army's biggest jobs: Under Secretary of War. The one-star Under Secretary, who will soon be out of uniform: placid, moose-tall (6 ft. 5, 240 Ibs.) Kenneth Claiborne Royall.

Better known in North Carolina than he was in Washington, General Royall left a $50,000 law practice in Goldsboro, N.C. in June 1942, to take a colonelcy and an assignment as chief of the Army Service Forces' Legal Section. Appointed by the President, he served as counsel for the eight German saboteurs—a job which, as a professional, he thoroughly enjoyed. Afterwards he sank back into the obscurity of the ASF's Legal Section, until Henry Stimson discovered him and made him his special assistant.

Rediscovered by Secretary Robert Patterson, who had been Stimson's Under Secretary, Royall was marked by Washington gossips for the top War Department job when solemn Bob Patterson retires. The man from North Carolina, who was once one of the state's best trial lawyers, was not excited. His ambition: "I'd kind of like to go back to my home town."