Ambassador

Despatches at length announced the long expected appointment of Senator Victor Henry Berenger to succeed Ambassador Nosky Georges Henri Emile Daeschner at Washington. Observers recalled that Senator Berenger is Reporter General of the Budget to the Senate; that he came to the U. S. as second ranking member of M. Caillaux's ill fated debt mission (TIME, Oct. 5, Oct. 12) and that he is almost as widely known as a financial expert as Finance Minister Loucheur.

Since M. Berenger will continue as a Senator, he will come to the U. S. on a "temporary appointment" renewable indefinitely every six months. Because M. Caillaux is generally thought in France to have cut his visit much too short for successful negotiation with Secretary Mellon, it is widely rumored that Senator Berenger comes as a sort of "permanent diplomatic conversationalist" to keep the French debt negotiations amicably simmering until they can be definitely pinned down to a fixed sum.

Finance Minister Loucheur gave out the following statement:

"It is for the purpose of resuming the negotiations at Washington begun by M. Caillaux that M. Berenger is leaving for the United States soon as French Ambassador, and we hope that when an accord is reached the French franc will follow the upward course of the Belgian franc and Italian lira. . . ."

Raconteurs, dwelling upon the personality of M. Berenger, recalled that a Washington correspondent once asked the 58-year-old Senator to name his favorite form of sport or exercise. Came the short-clipped answer: "L'escrime, la natation!* Mais, mes distractions sont les voyages, la lecture et la promenade!"/-

*Fencing, swimming. /-Travel, reading, walking.