Leg-Men

In the State Department, foreign envoys are what legmen are to a newspaper.

Their chief function is to gather inside news, authentic and up-to-the-minute.

Last week, to the vexation of Cordell Hull, the U. S. legman in France, hottest news spot in the world last week, was sending no news whatever: he was practically incommunicado.

When the Germans invaded Paris, Ambassador William C. Bullitt decided to carry on in Casabianca tradition and stay.

Last week, all Mr. Hull had heard from him--through Berlin--was that he was still there. For inside news from France, good, grey, softly swearing Mr. Hull was dependent on elegant, inexperienced Anthony J. Drexel Biddle Jr., Ambassador to Poland, who had followed his Polish post, like an outfielder chasing a liner over his head, from Warsaw to Paris, to Bordeaux.

At week's end Mr. Hull sent Mr. Biddle to London, where the Polish Government had finally come to earth.

How Francophile Bill Bullitt was faring in Paris was a matter of prayerful conjecture. A week before the Nazis arrived he had proclaimed, "Every civilized man is praying, after his fashion, for the victory of France." Said a friend in Washington last week: "I'm afraid it will break old Bill's heart. The Germans will probably bow to him from the waist and have caviar shipped in especially, and he would love it if they put him on bread and water." At week's end Mr. Bullitt was reported to have left his hosts, traipsed off to Bordeaux.

News of other U. S. diplomatic legmen last week:

> Back to Germany after reporting in Washington flew adroit Alexander Kirk, veteran charge d'affaires, to his uncomfortable post in Berlin.

> In German-held Brussels was Belgian Ambassador John Cudahy, almost as silent as his colleague in Paris.

> Northward to Iceland traveled blond, chunky, 39-year-old Bertel Eric Kuniholm, Foreign Service career man, to serve as first U. S. consul to Iceland. The office was created when Iceland's sovereign, King Christian of Denmark, capitulated to Adolf Hitler last April. Mr. Kuniholm's staff: one clerk.

> Ill in Florence lay the President's special envoy to the Pope, Myron C. Taylor.

Mrs. Taylor, week after she landed in New York on the S. S. Manhattan, flew back to him by Clipper. Early this week he was given a blood transfusion, rushed to Rome for an operation.

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