Penny Ante

In 300 U.S. embassies, legations, consulates and special missions around the world, nothing is more likely to cause hot blood and cold sweat than mention of Brooklyn's Democratic Congressman John J. Rooney. As chairman of the House subcommittee on State Department appropriations, Rooney keeps a harsh eye and a hard thumb on what he calls "booze allowances for cooky pushers"--the representation allowance diplomats get for official entertaining. Last week the department's representation allowance request for fiscal 1962 was up before the parent House Appropriations Committee. Pared to meet Rooney's tastes, the $953,000 budget was well below the level provided by West Germany; it was barely $100,000 over the 1961 request, even though the U.S. has had to open 14 embassies and three consulates in new African countries. Result: U.S. diplomats will have to cough up an estimated $700,000 out of their own pockets for entertainment they consider essential to their jobs.

Because of the limit on representation allowances, top State Department professionals cannot accept such expensive key posts as London or Paris, which traditionally go to well-heeled amateurs. Multimillionaire Publisher John Hay Whitney, Ike's last Ambassador to the Court of St. James's, annually spent more than $100,000 above his $6,000 allowance. In four years in Rome, Paper King James D. Zellerbach spent $200,000 of his personal fortune for government party-giving. Even in lesser posts, Foreign Service careermen find it hard to get by. One minister-counselor in Paris asked to be relieved of duty because he couldn't stand the expense, and a veteran now being reassigned from Europe to South America says frankly: "I truly hope that social life at my new post is rather quiet, because I won't know how to make ends meet otherwise. Last year I could prove that out of my salary I had to spend $2,400 for purely professional reasons."

Simple Canapes. Except where wealthy men are in charge, U.S. embassies are often forced to serve bread while rivals offer cake. To celebrate the anniversary of the October Revolution, the Soviet embassy in Bonn last year hired the city's best club, lavished 500 guests with vodka, Crimean champagne and caviar. For the traditional Fourth of July celebration, able U.S. Ambassador Walter C. Dowling, a careerman, could afford only $287--enough to give 360 visitors a pass at trays of simple canapes and a sip of cheap German sparkling wine. In Leopoldville, where the Belgians established an Elsa Maxwellian standard of party-giving that the Congolese now regard as the norm for diplomatic life, U.S. Ambassador Clare Timberlake must keep up with the Joneses on a budget of $2,000. "I haven't asked for an increase and don't intend to," he says. "But I'd like to feel I could serve my country without being personally out of pocket every year."

Actually, some 70% of the Foreign Service's "booze allowance" goes for food rather than drink. And ironically, many of the personal entertainment debts are rung up because of demands made by U.S. visitors--particularly Congressmen. In 1959, some 200 Congressmen stopped by in Madrid, all deserving of hospitality from Ambassador John Lodge. Ambassador to Brazil John Moors Cabot, who usually spends $5,000 from his own pocket on entertainment, has had to wine and dine 28 U.S. Governors and their wives and half a dozen congressional groups in the last six months. Says he: "You've just got to do something about them."

Frontal Assault. Even before his inauguration, John Kennedy tried a frontal assault on the problem, called Congressman Rooney down to Palm Beach (TIME, Jan. 6) for a day of consultation. Result: Rooney promised to give specific help in needy cases, among them Ambassador to Paris James Gavin, who has no personal fortune. But Rooney promised no relief for U.S. junior diplomats, who pick up a large share of the entertainment tabs. In India. 64 U.S. Information Service officers share $4,700 a year for line-of-duty hospitality. In New York, where junior-grade careermen do not get even the quarters allowance that is customary overseas, 23 diplomatic officers at the U.N. delegation must entertain representatives of 98 countries on $17,000.

Inevitably, the U.S. image is often tarnished by hospitality that so patently bears a nickels-and-dimes sign. Recently, the U.S. Information Service in The Netherlands called in a group of influential Dutch editors for a seminar to explain the significance of last November's elections. After the first day's lectures, USIS hosts explained that guests could have two beers or two glasses of Dutch gin at the embassy's expense. That night at dinner, waiters began serving two slices of meat to guests, but stopped halfway through to take one slice away from the plates already served. Under John Rooney's representation allowance, the budget for the dinner permitted one slice of meat per man, and not a calorie more.

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