Chameleon & Career Man

Shakeups in the U. S. diplomatic corps have been frequent this year but last week a new shakeup hit the highest spots. In

Washington an "authoritative White House source" revealed that the successor to Ambassador William E. Dodd in Berlin, who handed in his resignation last summer, would be Assistant Secretary of State Hugh R. Wilson. Next day even bigger news broke. The New York Times, whose White House pipe line is the envy and despair of other papers, revealed that Robert Worth Bingham, Ambassador to the Court of St. James (now recuperating from malaria at Johns Hopkins), would be replaced by Irish Joseph Patrick Kennedy.

Joe Kennedy was besieged by the press. Said he: "It sounds just like one of those things." This cryptic comment was no rebuttal. Neither the State Department nor the President showed an inclination to deny the report. Having already finished his job as chairman of the Maritime Commission (TIME, Nov. 22), Joe Kennedy gave a farewell party to his staff at his Maryland mansion, and set off for a fortnight's holiday at Palm Beach in the manner of a man getting ready to tackle a new job.

Chameleon Man. In Louisville, Ky., Robert Bingham was a fine dignified publisher, but in London as an Ambassador his chief distinctions were: 1) the number of honorary degrees he accepted from British universities; 2) the fact that he did not get around to warning the State

Department of last year's abdication crisis until it exploded in the House of Commons. His replacement has long been an obvious move, expected to take place as soon as Franklin Roosevelt could find a plausible excuse for parting with Mr. Bingham without hurting his feelings.

But the appointment of Joe Kennedy had not been obvious. A star baseball player at Harvard at 20, a bank president at 26; a peanut peddler on Boston excursion boats at 9, a cinemagnate at 36; a pool operator in liquor stocks at 45, chairman of SEC at 46, Joe Kennedy at 49 is a chameleon. Not the least chameleon-like of his traits is that he is a close friend and supporter of Franklin Roosevelt, yet trusted by Business.

There were only a few plausible reasons why this man of multiple talents should be picked for and accept the job of Ambassador to Britain. One was that in his role as a representative of Business sense within a reform administration, he had lost out, or felt he had lost out, and taken the opportunity to put the Atlantic between him and the grievous worries of the New Deal beset by a new depression. Another was that besides the job of negotiating the details of a reciprocal trade treaty with Britain, Franklin Roosevelt faces major developments of U.S. foreign policy that make him want his hard-headed friend in London. Both these motives might also be combined.

In any event, when Joe Kennedy and his wife, daughter of Boston's onetime Mayor John Francis Fitzgerald, arrive in London with a quorum of their nine children, an old tradition of U. S. diplomacy will have been broken: for the first time in history, a U. S. Ambassador to Britain will be 1) Irish and 2) Catholic. Career Man. Ambassador William E. Dodd's departure from Berlin has long been foreshadowed by his open, undiplomatic detestation of Nazi methods, which reached its climax last summer, when he publicly protested against the State Department's granting of permission to his aide, Prentiss Gilbert, to attend a Nazi Party Congress at Nurnberg (TIME, Sept. 20). Said he last week: "I hope now to be able to renew my work on a history of the old South."

Ambassador Dodd's successor is a trim, close-mouthed diplomat whose career has been as single-tracked as Joe Kennedy's has been heterogeneous. After a misguided effort to oblige his parents by going into business when he left Yale in 1906, Hugh Wilson married and started in at the bottom of the foreign service ladder as private secretary to the U. S. Minister to Portugal in 1911. Rungs thereafter included service in legations or embassies at Guatemala, Buenos Aires, Berlin, Vienna, Tokyo and Berne. In 1927 he got his first top-flight appointment as Minister to Switzerland, since then has maintained a perfect attendance record at European conferences to which the U. S. sent delegations until the Nine-Power Conference at Brussels last month.

Odd Man. In the complex game of musical chairs which appointments of U.S. Ambassadors often resemble, only member left standing when the music stopped last week appeared to be Joseph E. Davies, long thought to have an eye on the London job. Back from his post at

Moscow, jolly Mr. Davies called at the White House, just before all the news leaked out, jovially announced to the press: "I'll go anywhere the boss sends me." Best chance for Joe Davies to go anywhere except back to Russia last week was that Franklin Roosevelt might send him to Paris, in case he recalled his friend "Bill" Bullitt to replace Hugh Wilson.

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