In Washington, In London

An Ambassador "is entitled to complete immunity from the jurisdiction of the local courts except in cases where he submits to or invites the jurisdiction of those courts."--Section III, Diplomatic Privileges Act.

His Britannic Majesty's Ambassador to the United States, Sir Esme Howard, sat with Lady Isabella Howard, last week, in the back seat of an automobile which purred through Washington, D. C., driven by their son, Henry A. Howard. As they swept past a streetcar, a small girl stepped off, received a glancing blow from the purring car, fell, and sustained concussion of the brain. She was 12-year-old Beatrice Mae De Forest, daughter of a paymaster at the Weather Bureau.

Although 16 is the minimum legal age for auto drivers in Washington, and although Master Henry A. Howard is only 14, an arrest could not be made because of the immunity which cloaks the person and family of an Ambassador. Therefore hot indignation seethed.

Meanwhile the blood and breeding of a Howard* caused Sir Esme and his lady to put their personal surgeon and an Embassy car at the disposal of small, quickly recovering Beatrice Mae. Her parents, gentle folk, scouted the idea of legal redress. Meanwhile London journalists cabled that one "Mrs. Scott" is still yearning for vengeance upon Alanson Bigelow Houghton, U. S. Ambassador to Great Britain, because a U. S. Embassy car collided early last summer with a bicycle on which rode the woman's 16-year-old son.

When Mrs. Scott threatened to sue, the U. S. Embassy issued an icy statement: "We have not put forward any plea for immunity and there is no intention to do so. It would be more or less automatic. An Ambassador cannot be sued in a court. If a summons were received here we should have to send it to the Foreign Office."

Neither cowed nor overawed, Mrs. Scott obtained a summons against the Ambassador's insurance agents, but even this was quashed when the matter came to court "on the grounds that the defendant is the American Ambassador."

If the technique of Ambassador Howard be approved as gentle, and that of Ambassador Houghton as just, there remains a third method, recently adopted by the Marquis de Merry del Val, Spanish Ambassador to Great Britain.

One Saunders appealed to the Marquis, stating that a Spanish Embassy limousine had upset a motorcycle and side car in which rode Mr. and Mrs. Saunders and their four-year-old daughter. Both parents were severely bruised, and the child suffered a broken shoulder bone. Would the Ambassador help?

Having investigated, pondered, the Marquis Merry del Val dictated a pungent reply: "By your disregard of the rules of the road and of the most elementary precaution you jeopardized the lives of your wife, your baby and yourself. . . . Moreover, your action inflicted damage on my car, which whatever the insurance company may have made good from a pecuniary point of view is always to my loss, not only because a defaced car, however well repaired, is never the same, but also because it diminishes the vehicle's sale value.

"Under the circumstances it is only right that you should bear the consequences and I hope they will make of you a more careful driver."

* Sir Esme's family is excessively ancient, was authentically founded in the 13th Century.