TOP HANDS AT STATE

UNDER Secretary of State Christian Herter, who had slipped away only eight days before on a long-planned vacation at his South Carolina plantation, flew back to Washington last weekend on a MATS Convair bearing the blue seal of his office. Chris Herter, his 6-ft. 5-in. body bent by arthritis (he has recently been using a wheelchair and aluminum half crutches to get around), walked down the steps unaided to be met by Under Secretary of State for Economic Affairs C. Douglas Dillon, his next in command during the period of Foster Dulles' incapacity.

With Herter holding the title and ultimate responsibility and Dillon holding the high respect of Herter, White House and Congress, these two men would be running the West's most important diplomatic post for at least a few crucial weeks:

Christian Archibald Herter

Chris Herter, 63, was born and schooled in Paris, where his American parents were art students. Spindly young Chris was nine when he arrived in the U.S., found himself two years ahead of his age group at New York's Browning School. At Harvard he concentrated on fine arts, graduated ('15) cum laude, then enrolled concurrently at Columbia University's School of Architecture and New York's School of Fine and Applied Art. A Harvard classmate talked him into taking a minor Foreign Service job with the U.S. embassy in Berlin, and World War I turned the diplomatic pastime into a passion that never dwindled. After his elder brother Everit was killed in France with the A.E.F., Chris Herter resolved to make the achievement of peace his lifetime's mission.

In 1917 Herter married Mary Caroline Pratt, daughter of a staid and wealthy Standard Oil family (they now have three sons and a daughter), and took his bride to Switzerland, where he was on State Department assignment to help draw up a prisoner-of-war agreement. After that he went to the Versailles Conference, officially as a secretary but unofficially as hearing aide to U.S. Delegate Joseph Clark Grew, who was growing increasingly deaf. In 1921 Herter returned to the U.S. as secretary to Commerce Secretary Herbert Clark Hoover in the Harding Administration.

Out of the Kitchen. Washington under Harding, Herter recalls, was "like a dirty kitchen, where cockroaches abound." Herter quit, moved to Boston as co-owner and salaryless co-editor of the old magazine of opinion, the Independent, once graced by Henry Ward Beecher. Active as a Republican, he was elected to the Massachusetts legislature in 1930, became its speaker in 1939, and in 1942 was elected to the U.S. House of Representatives. Named chairman of a Select House Committee on Foreign Aid, he led his committee abroad on a survey trip, laid much of the groundwork for the Marshall Plan legislation. So strict were Herter's rules that once, when the committee was traveling abroad, a sign appeared in the Queen Mary's lecture room: "Here sat the Committee on Foreign Aid/And worked like hell while the others played."

In 1948 Herter worked as a member of a team drafting foreign-policy speeches for U.S. Presidential Candidate Thomas E. Dewey. Teammate: Doug Dillon. Team coach: John Foster Dulles. Herter met Dwight Eisenhower in Paris in 1951, instantly joined the ranks of Republicans urging Ike to run for the presidency, helped as a campaign adviser in 1952.

Back to the Desk. Polished, pleasant, hawk-eyed Chris Herter, says a close friend, has never had "that indefinable something that makes dogs and children follow him down the street"--but his recognized abilities were enough to get him narrowly elected Governor of Massachusetts in 1952, and his skilled, if unspectacular, performance was enough to get him overwhelmingly re-elected in 1954. In 1956, his gubernatorial career about to end, Herter became Harold Stassen's unwilling selection for Vice President against Richard Nixon (Herter publicly rebuffed Stassen, himself made a nominating speech for Nixon). Soon after the 1956 elections, Dulles called on Herter to rejoin the State Department as Under Secretary.

At State, Herter has made few headlines in a job where headlines are likely to come only after major gaffes (as Herter's Under Secretary predecessor, Herbert Hoover Jr., found out more than once). Herter has won Secretary Dulles' increasing confidence, in the last year has been handed day-to-day direction of U.S. policy at the Geneva disarmament and nuclear-test conferences, in the critical Middle East and in Indonesia. He knows his job and he likes it, and for however long Foster Dulles may be gone. Chris Herter, subject always to the will of the President and unpredictable call from the Dulles bedside, will be the undeniable boss.

C. (for Clarence) Douglas Dillon

Doug Dillon, trim (6 ft. 1 in., 188 Ibs.) but beginning to fringe on top at age 49, last year nailed down a top place in Ike's regard. As Under Secretary of State for Economic Affairs, hardworking, soft-selling Dillon earned a major share of the credit for steering reciprocal trade and foreign aid through a bullheadedly balky Congress. Perhaps the most popular of all-State Department officials on Capitol Hill, Dillon is especially friendly with Arkansas Democrat William Fulbright, new chairman of the powerful Senate Foreign Relations Committee.

Across the Board. Born in Geneva while his parents were making the Grand Tour, Doug Dillon followed a pedigreed path: from Groton ('27) to Harvard ('31) with a B.A. to his father's Manhattan investment banking firm of Dillon, Read & Co.

Five months after Pearl Harbor, Dillon went on active Navy duty as an ensign, participated in the invasions of Guam, Saipan and the Philippines, served as operations officer for the Seventh Fleet air arm, was discharged in 1945 as a lieutenant commander, and returned to Dillon, Read as chairman of the board. An active Republican, Dillon was elected to the New Jersey Republican State Committee. In 1951 he helped organize the New Jersey Republicans for Eisenhower in the bitter preconvention campaign. After election President Eisenhower named Dillon U.S. Ambassador to France. Dillon was widely traveled in France, spoke French fluently (although he continued, as ambassador, to take an hour's instruction daily).

Up in Esteem. During his four years on the Place de la Concorde, Doug Dillon faced problems enough to stagger the ordinary diplomatic imagination: the U.S. was engaged in a futile effort to push France into the European Defense Community, the Fourth Republic was in its death convulsions, French Indo-China was going down the drain, French North Africa was in rebellion. On North Africa Dillon set U.S. policy and earned French gratitude with a famous 1956 statement: "The U.S. stands solidly behind France in her search for a liberal and equitable solution of the problem in Algeria." Dillon confronted each situation quietly and competently, rose so high in Secretary Dulles' estimation that in 1957 the call came to return to Washington as Under Secretary.

In his vital job handling foreign-economic policy, Dillon has had few peers. He works well as a member of the Republican team, is considered a stauncher follower of Dulles' policies than Herter. Yet such a Democrat as Oklahoma's Senator Mike Monroney has called Dillon "the brightest light in the State Department."

Says Dillon of his general views: "Whether the verdict will go to the Communist system or to the Western system of freedom will, I believe, be heavily influenced by the effort which the industrialized countries of the West are prepared to put forth in helping the less-developed areas to achieve an adequate rate of economic growth."

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