Homing Diplomats

One day last week Joseph Clark Grew, U. S. Ambassador to Japan, sailed through the Golden Gate into San Francisco Bay. One evening last week Robert Worth Bingham, U. S. Ambassador to the Court of St. James's, embarked at Southampton, sailed down the Solent. In Copenhagen Madam Minister Ruth Bryan Owen packed her trunks, stowing away precious Eskimo costumes brought as trophies from Greenland. In Budapest, U. S. Minister John Flournoy Montgomery looked at the lush trees of Andrassy Utca, wondered whether their leaves would have turned before he saw them again. In Cairo, U. S. Envoy Bert Fish, in Warsaw, U. S. Envoy John Cudahy, in Riga, U. S. Envoy John Van A. Macmurray ticked off on their fingers the days to their departures. For a diplomatic pilgrimage was on, a pilgrimage of which the holy city was Washington, the temple the White House, its shrine the ear of Franklin Roosevelt.

Ahead of his homecoming colleagues, Ambassador Jesse Isidor Straus had already landed in the U. S. And last week ahead of all of them in the study of President Roosevelt was Ambassador Jefferson Caffery who poured good news from Havana into the Presidential ear: Since the negotiation of the reciprocal trade agreement with Cuba (TIME, Sept. 3), business there had picked up, Cubans were pulling out of the Depression.

With this good report at hand, the President had no difficulty in making up his mind what to say about the protests of U. S. radicals who demanded Ambassador Caffery's recall because he had "interfered in Cuba's internal affairs." The President officially endorsed the State Department's declaration that Mr. Caffery "had the full confidence of the U. S. Government and people."

P:Admitting to the Press that he did not think his $4,000,000,000 Works Relief program had put more than 75,000 or 100,000 men to work by Aug. 1, President Roosevelt predicted that 90% to 95% of the unemployed would have been given relief jobs by Nov. 1, but asked not to be held too closely to his estimate. Meantime he allotted $95,000,000 for direct relief in August.

P:One hot evening, taking Undersecretary of the Interior Charles West, and two of his female secretaries, Franklin Roosevelt motored out into the Maryland countryside for a picnic supper. For the still hotter weekend, he took Senator and Mrs. Wheeler, Assistant Secretary of Commerce and Mrs. Johnson aboard the Sequoia to fish on the lower Rappahannock.

P:Thirtyfour representatives of the four estates--business, labor, agriculture and education--were picked by the President to advise his $50,000,000 National Youth Administration. Among them were: Owen D. Young, aged 60; William Green, 62; Psychologist Charles Hubbard Judd, 62; Bishop Francis John McConnell, 63; President Ernest Hiram Lindley of the University of Kansas, 65; Inventor Hiram Percy Maxim, 65, Publisher Bernarr Macfadden, 66. Some youngsters also got on the committee: A. A. Berle Jr., 40; Amelia Earhart Putnam, 37.

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