Up Pay, Up Standards

After 90 years, something was finally done about the low pay of U.S. diplomatic envoys. Last week President Truman signed a bill which upped the pay of Foreign Service officers at all levels for the first time since the administration of President Franklin Pierce. The bill also upped the standards of the Service itself.

Up to last week there had been one scale--$17,500 a year for ambassadors and $10,000 for ministers, regardless of the importance of their assignments. Now there would be four brackets--from $15,000 to $25,000, according to the posts. Also substantially increased were allowances for maintenance of residences, entertainment, etc.

At many posts the boosts would still fall far short of meeting bills for maintaining an expensive house, a large corps of servants, and entertaining on a scale befitting an envoy of the world's richest nation. In London, Averell Harriman, who has been getting about $31,000 salary and allowance (before taxes on his salary) will now get about $65,000 a year (before taxes)--to run a show which, by prewar standards, was guesstimated to cost upwards of $100,000 a year.* His Union Pacific railroad fortune would still be a handy thing to have around the Embassy.

Command Schools. But the Foreign Service careerist without a substantial private income now took hope. With the increases he could at least afford to become an ambassador or minister at some inexpensive post. Quite as important as the increases in attracting and keeping good men were other changes. Among them:

P: A Foreign Service Institute, patterned on the Army's and the Navy's command schools, in which promising men will be trained in specialties, to which fledgling ambassadors will come recurrently for updating in U.S. and foreign developments.

P: A new basis for promotions and retirements, patterned on the Navy's hard-boiled "promotion up or selection out'' system. Men who fail to win promotions on ability will be weeded out.

P: Foreign Service officers will be required to spend their leaves in the U.S. every two years, must pass at least three of their first 15 years of service on assignments in the U.S. The idea: to keep officers in step with the U.S. viewpoint, to freshen democratic outlooks frequently fuzzed by overlong foreign exposure.

* Britain's Ambassador to Washington gets a tax-free $70,000 salary, plus allowances.

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