Ambassador to the Future

Lloyd George was asked; but he said he was too old. The Duke of Windsor hinted that he would like the job; but he was not asked. Across London's area of rumor, a whole parade of names passed--familiar names, unfamiliar names, here a man who knew Britain's needs intimately, there one who could talk slices of turkey with Mr. Knudsen.

At week's end the choice had been made. The next British Ambassador to Washington will be Edward Frederick Lindley Wood, Viscount Halifax, 59, since 1938 Britain's Foreign Secretary.

Three thousand miles away in the U. S., where there had been much talk of a new Britain run for little men by liberal men, there was some surprise at this choice: a Lordship, a Tory, an old Etonian, a man once associated with Chamberlain and the Cliveden set and that horrid word, appeasement. There were old-fashioned family tie-ups: the only other Foreign Secretary who subsequently became Ambassador to the U. S., Viscount Grey of Fallodon, was Lord Halifax's third cousin, and the man named to succeed him, Anthony Eden, is also his third cousin.* Lord Halifax certainly represented the old Britain. But in London there was a feeling that Lord Halifax would be fine.

In the first place, the label-conscious U. S. had at first given the late Lord Lothian exactly the same tags; but he had turned out first-rate. Besides, Lord Halifax had been through everything--all the way from the practice of pious imperialism as India's Viceroy, to its desperate defense as Britain's wartime Foreign Secretary. Having bossed ambassadors, he would know how to be one. It was felt that those Puritan Americans would like Halifax's deeply religious nature. This devotion, which bred the conviction in him that Adolf Hitler is a creature of the devil, had erased any traces of appeasement and made him one of the most unswerving workers for the eventual triumph of righteousness.

Lord Halifax's decision to accept the post was hard. It was a wrench to be sent out of the thick of things, to be made responsible to some young fellow like Tony Eden. But the U. S. post might be one to change the whole future of Britain's history. And he thought back to the day in 1926 when Stanley Baldwin offered him the Viceroyalty of India. At that time he went at once to ask the advice of his aged father, the late 2nd Viscount Halifax. His father took him straightway to church. Together the two prayed. When they came out, the father said: "I think you really have to go, Edward." Edward said: "I think so, too."

* As Eden's successor in the portfolio for war, Churchill chose Parliament's famed Tory Chief Whip, Captain David Margesson.

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