Path of Duty

After Groton and Yale, tall, handsome William Averell Harriman came face to face with a problem which plagues only the sons of the rich. Should he take a job, or shouldn't he? He had no need of money. He had been obviously out of place during a period he spent as a section hand on his father's Union Pacific Railroad. But he chose the difficult path.

In two decades of dutiful adventuring in business, Averell Harriman took flyers in foreign mines, in steamship lines, a motion-picture enterprise, and airlines. He stayed with none of them. His interest in Labrador retrievers and international polo--which he played with an eight-goal handicap--seemed more genuine.

Then Franklin Roosevelt was elected President. Harriman reacted to the New Deal like a weathercock in a gale. When other depression-struck railroads were frantically retrenching, he spent millions to give the Union Pacific low-priced dining service, comfortable day coaches, streamlined trains. He became an officer in NRA, and a devoted servant of the President.

Journey to Moscow. When war began to engulf the U.S., Franklin Roosevelt called on Harriman's services more & more, finally sent him to London to coordinate the vast operations of Lend-Lease. In October 1943, after months of harrying toil and travel, he was appointed U.S. Ambassador to Russia.

Harriman reorganized the Embassy. He worked methodically at cultivating the friendship of Soviet officials. He saw no evil, heard no evil, thought no evil of the great ally. Reporters had always thought Harriman a cold fish. Now, determined that the Russians should never feel that he had violated a confidence, he became even more fishlike. Sometimes his own daughter Kathleen, who helped run Spasso House,* did not know where his travels took him.

To Franklin Roosevelt, who knew him well, he was a good and accurate source of information. To the Russians he was increasingly a symbol of military success--as the war drew to its close, their habitual reserve melted. Soviet officials went to movies at Spasso House. At official parties Harriman was almost lionized by high officers of the U.S.S.R. For hours on V-E day, crowds of Moscow citizens demonstrated outside his window.

Disquieting Question. But last year he had cause to ask himself a disquieting question: Did the Russians really value him? His most urgent request that Molotov be sent to the San Francisco conference was gently ignored--it was Harry Hopkins, weak and ailing after a trying journey, who talked Premier Stalin into sending Molotov. And Harriman sensed something even more disturbing--the gradual crumbling of the sense of national partnership which had once seemed so real.

Stalin continued to show his personal friendship. Shortly after the U.S. leftist press attacked a Harriman off-the-record talk as anti-Soviet, Stalin sent him a white horse. When the Premier vanished from Moscow last October to vacation on the Black Sea coast, he received Harriman at his retreat. But beneath this surface benignity, Joseph Stalin seemed coldly and uncompromisingly aloof as he set Russia toward her destiny. Bitterly, Harriman determined to resign.

Last week, after many turnings, Averell Harriman's chosen path led him into a State Department reception room in Washington. Greying at 54, but still lean and handsome, he had just flown to the U.S. from Moscow. The President had appointed his successor--shrewd, driving Lieut. General Walter Bedell Smith, who had been General Eisenhower's wartime chief of staff. Now Harriman was to hold a last press conference. But before he could start talking, the door opened. State Secretary James Byrnes walked in. He was smiling and in his hand he carried a small leather case.

All the reporters and the ex-Ambassador arose. The Secretary opened the case, took out a decoration--the Medal for Merit--and pinned it on Harriman's coat.

Said Jimmy Byrnes: "For exceptionally distinguished conduct. . . in a position of great responsibility. . . ." A little self consciously Harriman thanked him. He unpinned the medal after Byrnes left, laid it down. He answered questions as politely and cautiously as ever. But when the newsmen filed out he stared curiously at the bright red ribbon.

* The Moscow mansion in which Harriman lived and did most of his work.

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