Scholar from Cuba

Some weeks ago a bespectacled, broad-domed young Cuban arrived in the U. S. unknown to the press, went roving about the country acquainting himself with U. S. life and thought. Last week, having completed his course of study, Dr. Pedro Martinez Fraga turned up at the White House, caught President Roosevelt, about to leave for Warm Springs, just in time to reveal himself in a courteous exchange as new Cuban Ambassador Extraordinary and Plenipotentiary to the U. S.

Not for the first time had Dr. Martinez Fraga thus combined scholarship with diplomacy. In 1919. year before he got his doctorate in civil and public law from the University of Havana, he was attache of the Cuban delegation to the Peace Conference at Versailles. He worked up to Cuba's No. 1 diplomatic post by way of service at the 1928 Pan-American Conference, in the Cuban House of Representatives from 1931 to 1933, and as Minister successively to Belgium, The Netherlands, Great Britain.

As a personable, 38-year-old bachelor who keeps trim by riding and fencing, Ambassador Martinez Fraga is sure of gratifying attention from Washington debutantes. Aside from striving to preserve and perhaps to better Cuba's favorable sugar export status against the attacks of U. S. refiners, he can rest his diplomatic worries largely on the "generous and cordial co-operation lent by Your Excellency" for which he thanked Good Neighbor Franklin Roosevelt last week.

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