U.S. Ambassadors

The U.S. has 59 ambassadors and twelve ministers accredited to the world's sovereign nations. To those nations, the face and voice of each ambassador is the voice and face of the U.S.

The faces and voices are important, though not as important as they used to be. A hundred years ago, when new instructions had to wait for the next packet, an ambassador had to make major decisions on the spot. Today, a diplomat's freedom of action is no greater than his distance from a Teletype. But if the words he speaks are not his own, the manner of his speaking and the energy or tact of his delivery can make a notable difference.

U.S. ambassadors do more than-talk to foreign ministers. They are also public-relations men with a whole nation for a client. They make speeches, inspect public works, judge flower shows, organize charities. They talk to labor leaders, opposition politicians, businessmen. And while they talk, they listen. For the other side of their job is to be the U.S.'s eyes & ears. On their reading of tempers and political moods Washington bases much of its timing and many of its decisions.

Who are these men who speak, look and listen for 155 million Americans? Most are career diplomats, painstaking, patient men who have come up the long ladder through minor embassy jobs to their final rewards. The typical career diplomat was born on the Eastern seaboard and graduated from an Ivy League college (though the younger, rising generation is more scattered in origin and education). His training makes him an observer rather than a doer, a compromiser rather than a shaker, a man of caution rather than a man of decision. Only a rare few have private means of their own, and except in the very biggest missions, riches are no longer a prerequisite.

The career men are generally quiet men, and inclined to be scholarly. One (W. Walton Butterworth, in Sweden) is a Rhodes Scholar; another (J. Rives Childs, in Ethiopia) writes novels and histories under a pseudonym (Henry Filmer), and carries an enormous private library with him wherever he goes.

Some typical career men:

P:James Clement Dunn, 60, U.S. Ambassador to Italy since 1946. Slim, impeccably tailored, a conservative, wealthy man (his wife is the former Mary Armour of the meat-packing clan), he has been in the State Department for 33 years, has served as assistant to three Secretaries of State, as chief of the Division of European Affairs. Born in Newark, N.J., he became a practicing architect before entering the State Department as a clerk. Dunn's main job has been to keep Italy from falling under Communist control, by cajoling, chivying and maneuvering the. Italian government, without laying himself open to charges of interference. One push in the other direction, appreciated by Italians: his efforts to get the terms of the Italian peace treaty relaxed. An indefatigable salesman for the U.S., Dunn is always on hand to dedicate a new bridge built by ECA funds, to present a shipload of toys from the American Legion, or a snow plow from the citizens of Jersey City to an Alpine village.

P:Walter J. Donnelly, 55, rated the ablest career man in the Latin American Division until Secretary of State Acheson snatched him away to become U.S. High Commissioner and Minister (now Ambassador) to Austria. Donnelly, an economist in his own right, has brought order to Austria's U.S. zone by insisting on paramount authority over ECA matters, and has managed his dual role of conqueror and ambassador with great tact. As one of the High Commissioners, his word is law, but as ambassador, he is careful always to call on Chancellor Figl instead of insisting (as do the Russians) on the Austrians coming to him. The son of a New Haven policeman, he married a Colombian aristocrat, and is a passionate baseball fan. Austrians appreciate his able presentation of their views in Washington.

P:Jefferson Caffery, 65, dean of the U.S. Foreign Service, as he has been a head of mission since 1926. Currently Ambassador to Egypt, he is a terse, taciturn autocrat who seems a little tired and jaded. Asked recently what U.S. policy should be in the bubbling Middle East, he rubbed his face and said: "I think the best thing we can do is try to get these people all over the Middle East to calm down." Last spring he assured a reporter that things were looking quieter--the Aga Khan had told him so. "The Aga always tells me about conditions when he's in town," explained Caffery.

P:John E. Peurifoy, Ambassador to Greece and one of the younger (44) and rising State Department officers. A South Carolinian with a politician's big smile and a knack of slapping backs without being offensive, Peurifoy is considered ideally suited to the politically minded Greeks. Under Peurifoy, the feuds between ECA, the military mission and the embassy have disappeared. He has managed to get the Greek Parliament to pass all the important enabling legislation ECA needed.

More than a third of the U.S.'s ambassadors are not career men but political appointees. Some of them have risen to the top of their professions. They are men of action, and sometimes get closer to the foreign men of action with whom they deal. In nations where the U.S. has large economic or military commitments, they are frequently better equipped by experience than the professional diplomats.

The Foreign Service could probably produce no one who would be quite as popular as Eugenie Anderson with the Danes or Chester Bowles with the Indians. In Liberia, Edward R. Dudley, a New York Negro lawyer and faithful Democrat, deals ably with the government, fishes with the Foreign Minister and amiably squats on his heels to beat time to jungle tom-toms. In Australia, ex-Congressman Pete ("Call Me Pete") Jarman bothers the State Department with his lack of professional competence, and obviously has to restrain himself from kissing every baby in the streets of Canberra, but does no serious harm.

Some typical political appointees:

P:Walter Gifford, 66, now U.S. Ambassador to the Court of St. James's, former board chairman of the American Telephone & Telegraph Co. Born in Salem, Mass., he is a self-made man who began as a clerk, rose to the presidency of A.T.& T. by the time he was 40. Quiet and retiring, he is a veteran of wartime posts in government consulting agencies, served as the first U.S. relief administrator under President Herbert Hoover during the depression. A Republican, he was picked with State Department concurrence. Though by inclination he avoids entertaining, he has studiously cultivated British ministers, has doggedly applied himself to learning the embassy's ropes. As a good-will ambassador to the British public, Gifford is not as effective as his predecessor, Lewis Douglas, since he is a poor speaker and dislikes public appearances. State considers that Gifford is doing a sound, if unspectacular, job.

Helen Eugenie Moore Anderson, 42, Democratic National Committeewoman from Minnesota until Truman appointed her Ambassador to Denmark. The daughter of a Methodist preacher, Mrs. Anderson, is unassuming, friendly and frank, has charmed the Danes with her unaffected democracy and by learning their language. She is married to John Pierce Anderson, a retiring artist and photographer who is one of the heirs to the Puffed Wheat fortune. Energetic Mrs. Anderson was a leader in Americans for Democratic Action, helped carry Minnesota for Harry Truman in 1948. She won the Danes soon after her arrival when she invited all the plasterers, painters and carpenters who had redecorated her official residence to the housewarming. The more complex diplomatic chores are carried out by her staff of career men, but Eugenie Anderson does a fine job of public relations, and helped convert the Danes from neutrality to alignment with the West.

P:William O'Dwyer, 61, ex-mayor of New York City, privately deplored by the State Department when Truman abruptly appointed him Ambassador to Mexico in 1950. But gregarious Bill O'Dwyer has become the most popular ambassador the U.S. ever had in Mexico. Mexicans like him because he speaks Spanish and because his wife is pretty. The O'Dwyers are enormously popular, entertain widely, and get around. He has a nice instinct for handling prideful Mexicans and a politician's feel for public relations. During an inspection trip to the Falcon Dam on the Rio Grande, a joint project of both nations, O'Dwyer said only: "One Falcon Dam is worth 1,000 speeches"--and was quoted all over Mexico. As a broad-minded politician, he gets on well with Mexico's broad-minded politicians. When O'Dwyer was being grilled by the Kefauver committee last spring, President Aleman sent his personal plane to bring O'Dwyer back to Mexico.

P:David K. Este Bruce, 53, now U.S. Ambassador to France, a rich man who has been in & out of government and politics all his life. The son of a U.S. Senator from Maryland, he went to Princeton, then law school, married the only daughter of Andrew Mellon (he is now divorced and remarried). He served a couple of terms in the Maryland and Virginia legislatures, devoted himself to managing the Mellon interests for twelve years. An old friend of W. Averell Harriman, he became Harriman's deputy as roving ECA ambassador to Europe, and later chief of the ECA mission in France. Bruce knows the French economy as few Frenchmen do. With a politician's touch, he gets on superbly with France's politicians. He speaks perfect French, owns a trained musical ear, an art connoisseur's eye, and a winetaster's palate (the Chevaliers du Tastevin, a group of winebibbers sworn never to let water pass their lips, have elected him grand master). With the help of his pretty second wife, he entertains prodigiously (one Fourth of July reception cost as much as the entire official entertainment allowance for the year). Like London, Paris is a clearinghouse for U.S. economic and military aid to Europe (ECA, NATO, SHAPE), and Bruce is at a pivotal place.

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.