Two Men & a Robot

The week was brisk with diplomatic comings & goings.

British Ambassador Lord Inverchapel, 66, jammed extra packages of sugar, rice and bacon into his luggage, and departed for Great Britain and retirement. The U.S. people, he declared, were "the nicest I've ever lived amongst." The man who had performed superbly under Japanese bombing during six years as ambassador to China, who had skillfully dealt with Joseph Stalin as wartime ambassador to Moscow, seemed old and tired. During his two-year U.S. tenure he had avoided the press, neglected receptions, become bored with the intricate economic problems which are the daily grist of present U.S.British relations. After 42 years in the diplomatic service, he was going back to his estate at Loch Eck in Scotland, to raise sheep and cattle, do some shooting on the moors. His replacement, Sir Oliver Franks, will arrive in the U.S. this week.

After eight months of bickering with his home government, stooped, bearded Rustem Vambery resigned as Hungarian minister to the U.S. The son of a famed orientalist, green-eyed, 76-year-old Rustem Vambery is a scholar of international standing. As judge, politician and professor of criminology, he had opposed Bela Kun's Communists and Horthy's Fascists with equal vigor in Hungary. He had lectured in England, was on intimate terms with Britain's royal family. Since 1938 he had lived in the U.S., teaching at New York's New School for Social Research. He had taken the job of minister in the forlorn hope that Hungary's Communist-dominated "coalition" government could be brought to a more friendly attitude toward the democratic U.S. After a "refresher" visit back home last year, he knew that that job was all but impossible. Last week he loosed a blast at his government, and also announced his intention of becoming a U.S. citizen. Said he: "I feel more at home here."

In New York, Yakov A. Malik arrived on the Queen Mary, to replace Andrei A. Gromyko as Russia's chief delegate to the United Nations. Few passengers knew that he had been aboard. Cornered in his cabin, he told ship news reporters: "I am Malik, I am glad to meet you, but I have no comment." A sandy-haired, broad-shouldered man of medium height, Malik had been well schooled in Russia's robot diplomacy. He had served as Russia's wartime ambassador to Japan, most recently as deputy foreign minister for Far Eastern Affairs. What comment did he have on the Wallace-Stalin letters? He had not read them. Did he have any message from Stalin? "If General Stalin intends, he himself will send it." Reporters noticed one difference between Malik and Gromyko. When Malik said "No comment"--which he did some 30 times--he smiled.

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