Going Home

The Earl of Halifax was planning a final trip through the country he knows better than any other foreign diplomat, and more widely than most U.S. citizens. A speaking tour in Nebraska and Kansas would bring the total of states he has visited to 44.

Then, about the end of April, he would be going home for good. There, on his farm at Garrowby on the rolling Yorkshire fields, he could talk crops, ride to hounds, drink the homemade beer from nearby Hickleton Hall. He might even drop in from time to time at the House of Lords, "where, you know, one has always the right to make a boring speech."

When Halifax was sent to Washington in the early days of 1941, he accepted a burden which Winston Churchill called "as momentous as any that the monarchy has entrusted to an Englishman in the lifetime of any of us." Through the trying years of the isolationist debate and the greatest war coalition in history, he won the resounding respect of the U.S. for himself and for his country.

But now he would be glad to get back--as a man who dearly loves Britain, he often says regretfully that he has "slept few nights at home in the last ten years." When he leaves, the U.S. will get another topnotch diplomat in his place. Sir Archibald John Kerr Clark Kerr,* polished, informal veteran of a dozen capitals on four continents, will come to Washington as soon as he winds up the peacemaking mission he has been assigned in Java.

*Newly elevated to the peerage, Clark Kerr has not yet chosen his title.

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