Suicide of a Consul

If a howling mob shoots a U. S. consul abroad, the U. S. Press takes lively notice of his death as a diplomatic "incident." Otherwise the decease of consuls at their posts rarely makes more than a stickful of home news. Last week, however, many a full-length obituary was devoted to the U. S. consul in Salonika, not because he died by his own hand as he was being invalided home but because he was George C. Hanson. Yet few of the news stories even hinted at the facts behind George Hanson's suicide.

What the admiring Press told of George Hanson was that he was a Bridgeport, Conn. boy who studied engineering at Cornell, who, just out of college, in 1909, shipped to China as a student interpreter. He turned into one of the ablest consular officers the U. S. ever had. He served at Shanghai, Chefoo, Dairen, Tientsin, Newchang, Swatow. Chungking and Foochow. He mastered Chinese dialects, Japanese, Russian. At Christmas 1921 he was moved to Harbin in troublesome Manchuria, a consular post he occupied for 13 years. Never a slender tea-party diplomat but a hearty 250-lb. Yankee, he did business in an effective Yankee fashion.

Scores of U. S. citizens in the Orient were his friends and admirers because he got them out of trouble or saved their skins. There were tales aplenty about his fellow-countrymen whom he placed under official arrest and locked up in his consulate with a bottle of Scotch while he kept the local authorities at bay, of pig-headed missionaries who were captured by bandits after ignoring warnings to seek safety and whose necks Consul Hanson saved from the executioner's sword by telling their captors, as only he knew how, ribald Chinese jokes. He was called "the man who never sleeps," "the Mayor of Harbin," "the uncrowned Emperor of Manchuria."

Not only was his local influence valuable to the State Department but, until the recognition of Soviet Russia two years ago, he was one of the best contacts the Department had with U. S. S. R. After recognition, he was named as the first U. S. Consul General at Moscow, a big job commensurate with his ability. Early this year he was in the U. S. on leave when his appointment as Consul General to Addis Ababa was announced (TIME, Feb. 25).

The story not printed last week was that when George Hanson first returned from Moscow last winter, he was invited to attend an informal luncheon given in Manhattan by the Russian-American Chamber of Commerce. Asked to make a speech, he said in the course of some good-humored remarks that U. S. businessmen need not expect to do any more business with the Soviet Union than the amount that the U. S. was prepared to extend in credit. About the same time he also attended a tea given in Manhattan by Soviet Consul General Leonid Tolokonsky.

Few days later George Hanson reported to the State Department in Washington, was promptly haled before a conclave of senior officials who looked reprovingly at him down their long diplomatic noses. He was informed charges had been brought against him on two counts: 1) While drunk, he had made remarks offensive to a friendly nation at the Chamber of Commerce luncheon. 2) He had been drunk at the Tolokonsky tea party. To friends George Hanson declared afterward that he had had just one cocktail before the Manhattan luncheon. Newspapermen who saw him at the tea were surprised to hear him described as drunk. So angry on his behalf were some members of the Press that they threatened to print the whole story if the State Department disciplined him.

Raymond Clapper, columnist of the Washington Post, one of the few to reveal last week any part of the story, declared that two famed U. S. citizens who had known Hanson in Manchuria and thought he was one diplomat in a thousand, lodged emphatic protests with the State Department. One was Karl Bickel, then president of United Press. The other was the late Will Rogers. Thereupon the State Department hierarchy decided to do nothing officially to George Hanson except to transfer him from Moscow to Addis Ababa, considered then about the darkest closet in which a diplomat could be confined. Soon, however, the Ethiopian capital took the spotlight as an important trouble spot and George Hanson's enthusiasm for his new job rose by leaps & bounds. He sailed away gaily taking his guns along and promising to bag an elephant while he was leading an exciting life in Ethiopia. The Press sent him off with plaudits as a "troubleshooter" on his way to a difficult post.

George Hanson never got to Addis Ababa. The State Department officials who wished to consign him to oblivion saw they had made a mistake. While he was on his way, they ordered Cornelius Van H. Engert to proceed from Cairo to take the Ethiopian post. Because George Hanson was "not familiar with the Near East," his orders were switched and he was told to proceed to Salonika, a Greek outpost with which he was also unfamiliar but where diplomatic limbo was certain. Soon after his arrival there, he fell ill. Invalided home, he sailed to Marseilles, boarded the Dollar Liner President Polk for the U. S. The State Department last week declared he was suffering from "sugar in the blood" and "nervous breakdown." His friends said he was suffering from despair over a career deliberately ruined by enemies in the State Department. Four days out from Marseilles George Hanson retired to his cabin one day after lunch, took out a gun and committed suicide.

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