Old Hands at State

In taking over the State Department, John Foster Dulles inherited some valuable (and some not valuable) career diplomats. No stranger to the people in the department, he took office with plans already outlined to make full use of the old hands, shifting them to new posts to carry out the new policies. Some prospective shifts reported last week:

P: Charles Eustis ("Chip") Bohlen, 48, departmental counselor, to be Ambassador to the Soviet Union. A Russian-speaking specialist in Soviet affairs, he did three tours of duty in Moscow between 1934 and 1944, was Franklin Roosevelt's interpreter at Teheran and Yalta, Harry Truman's at Potsdam. Before Bohlen, or anyone else, takes over as the new U.S. Ambassador in Moscow, the Administration will have to decide what to do about the Soviet government's unceremonious booting of former Ambassador George (Containment) Kennan, declared persona non grata last October.

P: George Venable Allen, 49, able Ambassador to Yugoslavia, to be Ambassador to India. Allen went into the foreign service in 1930, after a career as a North Carolina public-school principal and newspaperman (Asheville Times and Durham Herald-Sun), became Ambassador to Iran at 42.

P: John Moore Allison, 47, Assistant Secretary of State for Far Eastern Affairs, to be Ambassador to Japan. Allison taught English in Japan in the late 1920s before entering on a foreign service career. He visited the country in 1951 as John Foster Dulles' right-hand man in the Japanese Treaty negotiations. On the side, Allison is an authority on 18th century British Statesman Robert Walpole and his letter-writing son Horace.

P: Karl Lott Rankin, 54, charge d'affaires in Taipei, Formosa, to be Ambassador to Nationalist China. A seasoned diplomat (Prague, Athens, Vienna, Belgrade, Brussels, Cairo, Canton, Hong Kong and other posts), Rankin has been Ambassador to China in all but name since August 1950, when he took over for ailing Ambassador J. Leighton Stuart.

P: John Moors Cabot, 51, Ambassador-designate to Pakistan, to be Assistant Secretary for Inter-American Affairs (see THE HEMISPHERE).

P: Livingston Tallmadge Merchant, 49, deputy to U.S. Ambassador to NATO William Draper, to be Assistant Secretary for European Affairs. Merchant, a prosperous investment counselor, went to State as an economic specialist in 1942.

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