Dodd to Germany

An hour after President Roosevelt announced his Ambassador to Germany last week, Senator Joseph Taylor Robinson, Democratic leader of the upper House and a principal Presidential spokesman at the Capitol, uprose to declaim: "The Nazi administration has startled and shocked mankind by the severe policies enforced against Jews. ... It is sickening and terrifying to realize that a great people should respond to impulses of cruelty and inhumanity which when they have spent their force will have lowered German civilization in the opinion of all people. . . ."

It was Chancellor Hitler's first serious flaying at the hands of a responsible U. S. statesman on the Senate floor. Senator Robinson's address, carefully prepared for domestic consumption, touched off a series of oratorical explosions against Germany. When the barrage was over, the Senate placidly confirmed the nomination of William Edward Dodd, 63-year-old professor of U. S. History at the University of Chicago, to be Ambassador to Germany.

President Roosevelt had lingered long and uncertainly over this third most important diplomatic appointment. He had chosen a quiet, scholarly North Carolina Protestant who could be counted on to keep his head amid Germany's racial uproar. The day of his appointment Dr. Dodd was digging in his Chicago flower garden when a newshawk asked him: "You talk German fluently?" "Yes," chuckled the professor, "that's what has got me into this trouble."

Graduated by Virginia's Polytechnic Institute in 1895, young Dodd went to Germany, took his Ph. D. at the University of Leipzig. Later he taught history at Randolph-Macon, went to the University of Chicago in 1908. A professorial friend of Professor Woodrow Wilson, he went frequently to the White House, in Washington met Assistant Secretary of the Navy Franklin Roosevelt. With Ray Stannard Baker he edited President Wilson's papers for publication. He has written Jefferson's Rueckkehr zur Politik (an account in German of Jefferson's first Presidential campaign), Life of Jefferson Davis, Statesmen of the Old South, Expansion and Conflict, The Cotton Kingdom. He was a strong and early champion of the idea that German imperialism cannot be wholly blamed for the War. Though a Democrat, the new Ambassador is a political unknown holding his first public office. As a college professor he was gleefully welcomed into the Roosevelt "Brain Trust." A relatively poor man, he hopes to get along in Berlin on his $17,500 salary. "After all," said he, "the days of show are over." Last week President Roosevelt also made the following diplomatic appointments which the Senate confirmed: Lincoln MacVeagh of New Canaan, Conn. to be Minister to Greece. A Groton-Harvard man like the President, Mr. MacVeagh is head of the Dial Press. His father was Coolidge's Ambassador to Japan; his uncle, Taft's Secretary of the Treasury; his grandfather, Garfield's Attorney General. Minister MacVeagh speaks modern Greek a little.

John Clarence Cudahy of Milwaukee to be Ambassador to Poland, a post declined by Boston's Mayor Curley. Tall, good-looking Ambassador Cudahy is a son of the late great Meatpacker Patrick Cudahy. Lawyer, soldier, big game hunter, author, he manages the Cudahy family fortune.

Robert P. Skinner of Massillon, Ohio, to be Ambassador to Turkey. A career diplomat, Ambassador Skinner got his first appointment from President McKinley. In 1903 he established diplomatic relations with Abyssinia by riding into Addis Ababa on a white ass.

Francis White, now an Assistant Secretary of State, to be Minister to Czechoslovakia.

Alvin Mansfield Owsley of Texas, onetime National Commander of the American Legion, to be Minister to Rumania.

Robert Granville Caldwell of Texas, dean of Houston's Rice Institute, to be Minister to Portugal.

John Flournoy Montgomery, California businessman, to be Minister to Hungary.

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