Careering & Proteges

Careering & Proteges

P: Out of New York harbor last week aboard the 5. S. American Legion sailed Hugh Simons Gibson, Grade A career diplomat, to take over his new job as Ambassador to Brazil. With him went his dark, distinguished wife, sorry to leave her native Belgium where her husband had been Ambassador for six years. Mr. Gibson used to be President Hoover's Man-About-Europe until replaced by President Roosevelt's Norman Hezekiah Davis.

P: Also out of New York harbor last week sailed Alvin Mansfield Owsley, fifth (1922-23) national commander of the American Legion, to become U. S. Minister to Rumania. With him aboard the Manhattan were his wife and three children. In Dallas where he lives, practices law and collects rugs there is a story to the effect that every time Mrs. Owsley has a baby, her wealthy father puts $100,000 or more into the Owsley family pocketbook.

P: President Roosevelt last week stepped Career Diplomat Sheldon Whitehouse up from Minister to Guatemala to Minister to Colombia. An urbane gentleman with wavy hair and elegant manners. Minister Whitehouse was educated at Eton and Yale, got into the Foreign Service as private secretary to the late great Whitelaw Reid when the New York Tribune publisher was Ambassador to Great Britain. As counsel of the Paris embassy in 1927 he was roundly flayed in Congress when it was discovered that sleuths had been sent after New York's Mayor Walker as that playboy took his fun in Paris.

P: From volcano-cursed Nicaragua to volcano-cursed Guatemala President Roosevelt last week shifted Minister Matthew Elting Hanna (no kin to the late great Marcus Alonzo Hanna) to succeed Mr. Whitehouse. Graduate of West Point, Mr. Hanna turned career diplomat in 1917. From Managua's 1931 earthquake Minister Hanna emerged a local hero.

P: Picked as U. S. Minister to Austria, today's hot spot of Central Europe, was George Hansell Earle Jr., polo-playing Philadelphia socialite. A onetime Republican, he supported Franklin Roosevelt last year. His appointment, first diplomatic patronage to go to Pennsylvania, had the endorsement of Joe Guffey, the State's Democratic boss. After his Harvard graduation (1913) Mr. Earle roamed Germany and Austria for two years, served in the Navy during the War, is now vice president of Pennsylvania Sugar Co., a director of the Philadelphia Record. Dark, handsome, husky, he lives with his wife and four children at Haverford on the swank Main Line.

Since March 4 President Roosevelt has been closely watched on his treatment of the Foreign Service. Would he, asked its anxious members, replace career men with a horde of deserving Democratic politicians who would have to learn their jobs from the ground up? Or would he equal President Hoover's record for giving professional diplomats an even break on appointments? After last week's shufflings it was apparent that the new President could be counted a true friend of the regular Foreign Service.

In four years President Hoover named 78 ambassadors and ministers of whom 32 were career men. In less than five months the President has named 23 ambassadors and ministers of whom nine were career men. Yet to be elected is a President who will appoint a career man to one of the service's four biggest posts--London, Paris, Berlin, Rome. Under Hoover three professionals became ambassadors and under Roosevelt, so far, the same number have received that rank. In Belgium, Greece, Spain and Rumania the President turned out career men to put in political proteges but he balanced the score by replacing politicos with career men in Canada, Cuba, Czechoslovakia, Turkey.

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