Diplomats Shuffled

London. The transfer of Ambassador Frank Billings Kellogg from London to the State Department sets up a train of consequences in the diplomatic service. After but a few days' suspense for the hopefuls who would have liked to have followed in the diverse footsteps of Messrs. Page, Davis, Harvey and Kellogg, the President announced the name of Alanson B. Houghton as Mr. Kellogg's successor.

Mr. Houghton for three years past has been Ambassador at Berlin. In a way Mr. Houghton is in accordance with the usual type of man appointed to the Court of St.James's. He was born in Cambridge, Mass. He was educated at Harvard. He is wealthy enough not to mind the fact that his salary of $17,500 will, at London, be only a drop in the bucket of his expenses. On the other hand, he is not a literary man, nor is he a publisher, a politician, an editor, a lawyer--but a manufacturer.*

Three years ago, Mr. Houghton was serving as a Congressman from New York. President Harding selected him for the job of reopening intercourse with Germany. He did so, and succeeded in winning the goodwill of the Germans to a marked degree. Knowing at first hand the aspects of Europe's great problems, including reparations, he goes to London with a better schooling than many men who have been sent there before him.

Berlin. The President, in plugging up the vacancy made by the withdrawal of Mr. Kellogg from London, thereby made another vacancy in Berlin. Again the aspirants began to count their chances.

The foremost candidate was Senator Medill McCormick of Illinois, who leaves his comrades on Mar. 4 because the Republicans of Illinois did not see fit to renominate him last year. A number of Senators spoke a good word to the President on their colleague's behalf--even Mr. Borah was reported to have done so. Yet while these movements were being made toward his appointment, others of the Senator's friends advised him against going to Germany because of the political situation in Illinois--the hope that Governor Len Small might be removed from office by court proceedings and Mr. McCormick have a chance to take hold.

Another man suggested as a possibility was Amdassador Henry B. Fletcher, now at Rome. It was said, however, that Mr. Fletcher would rather wait an opportunity to go to Paris in case Ambassador Herrick retired. Besides, the President had intimated that he might go out of the diplomatic service in making a choice because the problems at Berlin were "more economic than diplomatic."

Other names suggested included :

William H. Crocker of San Francisco (banker and Republican National Committeeman), Dr. Jacob Gould Schurman (ex-President of Cornell University, now Minister to China), James R. Sheffield (Ambassador to Mexico), Ogden H. Hammond (retired banker of New Jersey), Walter J. Damrosch* (famed orchestra conductor in Manhattan, son-in-law of the late James G. Elaine). Most of these were no more likely of choice than several score of others unnamed.

* Walter Johannes Damrosch was born in Breslau, Silesia, in 1862. Aged nine, he migrated to Manhattan. Dr. Leopold Damrosch, his father, was a musician of note, and in Walter's youth, Wagner, Liszt, von Bulow, Ruyer, Rubinstein visited his home. At 14 his father let him appear in his orchestra at the performance of an operetta but Walter was too nervous to life the cymbals. Nevertheless at 23 he became conductor of the N. Y. Symphony Society--at a time when there were only three symphony orchestras in the U. S. --the New York and Boston Symphonies and the N. Y. Philharmonic.

* He manufactures glass.