Sir Ronald for Sir Eric

Top hats, morning coats, decorations--all the regalia of a brilliant diplomatic party last week adorned the bodies of virtually all of France's Cabinet Ministers, most of her home diplomats, many of her social leaders, in one of the gloomiest caverns in Paris--the Gare du Nord. The notables had gathered to say good-by to a good friend, wit, gourmet, an artisan of tact, a monocle-bearing, well-dressed Briton, Sir Eric Phipps, 64, retiring from the British diplomatic service after two years as Ambassador to France and after 30-odd in the service of his Kings.

Sir Eric Phipps was educated at esthetic King's College, Cambridge. At 24 he passed the competitive examinations for the Diplomatic Corps, and was assigned in turn to posts in Paris, Constantinople, Rome, Paris again, Petrograd, Madrid, Paris again, London, Brussels, Paris again, and Vienna. In 1933, the year Hitler came to power, he was appointed Ambassador in Berlin. There he spent four incredibly difficult years, so distinguished himself in crisis after crisis that the Nazis, smarting under his smartness, were glad to hear of his transfer back to Paris (as Ambassador) in February 1937. And the French were delighted to get him.

What made Teutons fear and Gauls love Sir Eric Phipps was his wit, as dark and quick as sparkling Burgundy. One night while he was in Berlin, Field Marshal Hermann Goering arrived at an Embassy party late and breathless. Bowing deeply, Goering roared: "I have just come from the hunt." Sir Eric examined Goering from head to foot, and drawled: "Animals, I presume?"

Sir Eric's successor will be 56-year-old Sir Ronald Hugh Campbell, who served as Minister to Paris from 1929 to 1935, has since been Minister to Yugoslavia. It is unusual for a British Ambassador to France (with Paris and Washington at the top of the British Ambassadorial ladder) not to have served in more than one Legation and at least one other Embassy previously, but Sir Ronald is brilliant, literary, shrewd, tactful, firm, sardonic, and so intent on the matter before him that even his golf has something of the nature of a political demarche.

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