Messersmith to Mexico

The next U.S. Ambassador to Mexico will be one of the State Department's ablest, busiest career diplomats. For last week President Roosevelt chose George Strausser Messersmith, now Ambassador to Cuba, to succeed Josephus Daniels in Mexico City.

Thanks to the U.S.-Mexican agreement signed last fortnight (TIME, Dec. 1), the Mexican ambassadorship is more important than ever to the Good Neighbor Policy, the united hemisphere front against

Hitler. In both Washington and Mexico City, George Messersmith looked like the man to make the agreement work.

Brisk, skeptical, pedantic Mr. Messersmith was a school superintendent for 14 years before he entered the foreign service, then started the hard way as a consul in Canada. A stern crusader for the democracies, he was in Berlin as Consul General when the Nazis came to power. U.S. citizens in Berlin liked him because he was not afraid to talk tough when the rights of a U.S. citizen were infringed.

At 58, after 27 years in the State Department, he still keeps a reputation for all work and no play. Like many another hard-working American, he has no hobby except detective novels. He and his wife are fond of giving dinners for several hundred guests. The dinners are always connected with State Department business. His cook (a Belgian), who has been with him for 20 years, never flinches.

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