Back to Pack?

Britain's Ambassador to the U.S., lean, cadaverous Edward Frederick Lindley Wood, Viscount Halifax, returned to Washington last week. He flew in after a hasty trip to London, where he had talked things over with Winston Churchill. What his future was to be had Washington puzzled.

His arrival was an odd contrast to that cold, rainy morning last January when he steamed up Chesapeake Bay on Britain's biggest battleship, to be met at Annapolis by Franklin Roosevelt. This time only a State Department emissary was on hand to greet Lord and Lady Halifax.

This fanfareless meeting did not mean that the Administration was chilly to Lord Halifax. It did mean that celebrity-loving citizens of the U.S. have found his Lordship a chill, unbending, colorless personality. The qualities which appeal most to his own countrymen--diffidence, reserve, intellectual honesty--make no impression on the U.S. masses.

Both in London and Washington the rumor ran that Britain's Ambassador had returned to pack his bags, wait for his successor to be announced. If Lord Halifax had heard the rumor, he did not let on. He called at the White House, spent 50 minutes talking with the President. Said he: "We exchanged impressions. . . ." Asked about a report that Russia may be considering a separate peace with Germany, he answered flatly: "There is absolutely no sign of that at all."

As he left the President's study, White House police and newsmen hovered over a radio in the anteroom, listening to the tense fifth inning of the second World Series game between Brooklyn's Dodgers and the New York Yankees (see p. 71).

Said Lord Halifax: "I say, what is a World Series?" Reporter Fred Pasley of the isolationist New York Daily News told him, slyly added: "It is something like your cricket--only different."

"Yes, I imagine," said His Lordship. "I saw a match once, in Chicago." Then he mentioned that he had caught the first World Series game the day before, by radio. Said he: "I rather enjoyed it. The attendance was 68,540." *

*It was.

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