Old & New Faces

Nominated or appointed last week to posts in the Eisenhower Administration:

P: To be Assistant Secretary of State for Far Eastern Affairs: Walter S. (for Spencer) Robertson, 59, first-family Virginia investment banker and sometime China hand. A Democrat (who liked Ike in '52), Robertson went to work for the Government during World War II, served as chief of the Lend-Lease mission to Australia, then as embassy counselor and charge d'affaires in China's wartime capital, Chungking. In 1946 he headed the truce enforcement commission set up by the Marshall mission. After Marshall's makeshift appeasement failed, Robertson quit the foreign service, went back to banking with the conviction that the Chinese Communists were "ruthless Marxians," and that the U.S. had "sold China down the river."

P: To be Governor of Guam: Ford Q. (for Quint) Elvidge, 60, Seattle lawyer. When Interior Secretary Douglas McKay asked him whether he would accept the governorship, Elvidge protested that he was not ready to "retire to a South Sea island and sit under a palm tree"; he agreed to take the job only after McKay assured him that it was "a tough assignment." What makes it tough is that the Navy and the civilian administrators are waging a cold war to decide who is going to run the island.

P: To be Commissioner of Public Roads: Francis V. (for Victor) du Pont, 58, financier, Republican National Committeeman. A member of the chemical clan (his father was T. Coleman du Pont), Du Pont served for 27 years (23 as chairman) in Delaware's State Highway Department, is given major credit for the state's A-1 road system.

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