Out and Up

Friction is waste. Friction was removed from a governmental cog, last week, by the appointment of William Smith Culbertson to be U. S. Minister to Rumania. Mr. Culbertson has been a Republican, a Tariff Commissioner and yet-- friction's cause--not entirely sympathetic with the epochal Fordney-McCumber tariff. He joined recently with the Democratic Commissioners in officially advising the President to reduce the import duty on sugar--advice which has so far been ignored. But Mr. Culbertson has none of the insurgent's zest for battle. To cause embarrassment, embarrasses him. He was willing to resign with honor. The President surveyed the field of honors. There was Peking--but that, he was determined, should go to John Van Antwerp MacMurray, specialist on Oriental diplomacy (TIME, Apr. 13). And there was the lesser honor of Bucharest, scrappy Paris of the Balkans. The post needed a man skilled in big figures, capable of collecting bills which the outgoing minister* has failed to collect. Would Mr. Culbertson take it? He would and did. The new minister to Rumania was born in Pennsylvania, raised, schooled in Kansas. He attended Yale and several German universities. When only

27, he wrote a Glossary on Schedule K (wool tariff of 1910), which marked him as a tariff expert. Except for a few years spent in private law practice in Washington and a year as "Y" secretary overseas, Mr. Culbertson has devoted himself to the tariff.