What of it?

Ordinarily not much attention would have been paid to it. President Coolidge appointed Robert Edwin Olds, 49, lawyer of St. Paul, native of Duluth, Harvard '97, to be Assistant Secretary of State, to succeed John Van Antwerp MacMurray, appointed Minister to China (TIME, Apr. 13). During the War, Mr. Olds represented the American Red Cross in Europe. He was head of the Red Cross for about three years. At present, he is the American Member of the British-American Joint Arbitration Tribunal created by treaty in 1910, and serving in London. What of it? Nothing, but he is the second St. Paul man to receive a major appointment in about two weeks. The other was William D. Mitchell, made Solicitor General (TIME, June 15). Mrs. Mitchell and Mrs. Kellogg are very great friends--members of the same church in St. Paul. Mr. Olds, it happens, is also of the Kellogg circle--in fact, he was formerly Mr. Kellogg's law partner. Some murmured: "This man Kellogg has influence with the President."