Letter from Robert Brennan to Joseph P. Walshe (Dublin)
(Special Airmail)

The Chiefs of Foreign Diplomatic Missions were received yesterday by the new Secretary of State, Mr. James F. Byrnes.¹ As an indication of the informality which now prevails here the notification of the ceremony was received only two hours earlier by telephone. The ceremony was short and snappy – just a handshake down the line. He said to me, however, 'anyone from Ireland should have no trouble with a guy named Byrnes'. He looks much younger than his sixty six years.

His people, all Catholics, came from Brooklyn but his father died when he was still an infant and the family was left in hardship. His mother joined some relatives in South Carolina and there the family was brought up. The late Frank Hogan, a distinguished lawyer who was one of the most prominent Catholic laymen in the country and who was a first cousin of his, was brought up in the same family. Byrnes was baptised a Catholic but for some reason he now belongs to one of the protestant sects. This was the main reason why those who advocated his nomination for the presidency back in 1940 when it was still uncertain whether Roosevelt would seek a third term got cold feet. They were afraid the religious issue would be brought forward and that he would lose protestant support because he had been a Catholic and Catholic support because he was no longer one.

He served as Congressman from South Carolina from 1911 to 1925 and as Senator from the same State from 1931 to 1937. He was re-elected in 1937 for a six year term but in 1941 he was appointed to the Supreme Court from which he resigned in 1942 to direct War Mobilisation and thereafter he was referred to as 'Assistant President'. Everybody expected he would have been the vice presidential candidate with FDR in 1944 but he was the victim of a double cross in which, however, his good friend President Truman had no part.

It is believed he will make a good Secretary of State and that what he lacks in experience in foreign affairs will be made up for by his honesty and sound sense.