Newton D. Baker to Woodrow Wilson

I return herewith the draft of the Executive Order inclosed with your note of yesterday.
The proposed committee would deal with exports from the points of view of:
1. Preventing the goods from reaching the enemy;
2. Economic considerations;
3. The relative needs of the domestic market and of the entente allies.
These subjects are necessarily considered by the Council of National Defense and subordinate bodies have already been created and are actively at work collecting economic information, surveying the available supplies of raw material, devising modes of limiting improvident uses of raw material, arranging for efficient distribution of raw material, quantity production of useful articles, and price regulation. These committees undertake to establish priorities of importance as between the needs of the entente allies, the several branches of the government service, and the domestic demand. The committee of which Mr. Hoover is to be chairman will have the whole food problem for consideration from all of these points of view. The Munitions Board, which is in effect a committee of supply and purchase, is dealing with the metal situation, both domestic and foreign, and I am quite sure that the creation of a new committee of the kind suggested would overlap in its activities with work now actively in hand in various departments of the Council of National Defense.
It occurs to me to suggest as a possible solution of this difficulty, one or the other of the following courses:Either by legislation to include the whole Cabinet in the Council of National Defense, which at present contains but six Members of the Cabinet, leaving out the Secretaries of State and the Treasury, the Postmaster General and the Attorney General. This course, I think, would make the Council more cumbersome merely from being larger, but it would bring the whole thing under the presidency of the Secretary of State, and assure the consideration of the international aspects of all questions presented; orA second possible plan would be to have you instruct us as a Council of National Defense informally to include the Secretary of State as our counsellor and guide in the consideration of any matters having an international relation. We could then instruct the Director to include formal notice and invitation to the Secretary of State whenever any such matter was to be brought up, and we could, of course, accommodate ourselves in the matter of time and place of meeting to the convenience of the Secretary of State.
I think, too, that the question here presented would not be solved by the appointment of this particular committee. A specific situation, perhaps, could be so met, but it would recur constantly in another form. Some other question would be presented involving inter-departmental relations, and either including more departments in its scope than are represented in the Council of National Defense or including a less number than those so represented, and again the problem would arise as to whether you should create by Executive Order another inter-departmental board to deal with it. There would, therefore, be the precedent for the constant multiplication of formally created inter-departmental boards of a continuing character. Up to the present time the policy has been to create such boards only for the consideration and determination of a specific fact, like the board on the location of the nitrate plant, and I have assumed that as to all other inter-departmental questions it was your desire that the departments affected should informally consult one another, reach a conclusion, and draft their conclusion into a law or report for your final determination. This plan, as I have understood it, seems to me most elastic and flexible, allowing the composition of the informal conference to be changed with the scope of the question presented.