Crowder Out

"No one has yet seen him in a drawing-room in Washington, at any social affair, on a golf course or a tennis court. He has no pastimes, no recreations."

So it was once said, rather cruelly, of a man whose only master and major interest for most of his 68 years has been the U. S. Government. Last week he, Major General Enoch Herbert Crowder (retired), handed in his resignation as U. S. Ambassador to Cuba. He will leave this post on Sept. 1 to practice law in Chicago. His successor has not yet been designated.

The early careers of Major General Crowder and General John J. Pershing were closely intertwined. Both were born in the same Congressional district in Missouri; both went to West Point, Chowder graduated 1881, Pershing 1886; both studied law; both saw service in the Apache and Sioux Indian wars, in Cuba, in the Philippines; both observed the Russo-Japanese War for the U. S. Government. Everyone knows the fireworks that attended the climax of General Pershing's history. But who knows what Major General Crowder did in his usual working hours between 7:30 a. m. and midnight? Among other things, he was onetime Judge Advocate General (legal head) of the U. S. Army and its ablest lawyer in many a year. He was the chief author of the selective draft law-- an achievement as difficult as it was unpopular. In Cuba, he ably unraveled another thankless knot. As one of the makers of its organic law, as personal representative of President Harding, as U. S. Ambassador since 1923, no man has done more to take the chaos out of Cuba than Major General Crowder.

He is a plugger unseen and a bachelor.