The New Secretary

"Mr. President," said the tall, stooped man who had just been designated Secretary of State of the U.S., "I am deeply grateful to you. I shall do the very best I can."

The President and his new ranking Cabinet officer turned away from the microphones at Augusta National Golf Course. With a wave, sport-jacketed Dwight Eisenhower strolled off, leaving Christian Archibald Herter, 64, to answer newsmen's questions. The "same team will carry on" at the State Department, he told them, and John Foster Dulles "will be available for consultation with the President, or myself, whenever he feels up to it."

White Knuckles. A reporter asked Herter whether his arthritis would keep him from being as "active" as Dulles was. "I don't think necessarily," said Herter softly. "I can get around perfectly well. The only trouble that I have at all is standing for a long time or walking considerable distances. But with these sticks that I use"--he glanced at his aluminum arm crutches--"I can move along very comfortably." Reporters recalled how, as Under Secretary of State, Herter often had unflinchingly stood at attention at lengthy airport ceremonies for foreign dignitaries while the knuckles of his hands turned white from the strain of gripping his crutches.

Asked how tall he was, Herter said 6 ft. 4 1/2 in. "But I think I'm shrinking all the time," he added, in a smiling reference to his arthritic stoop. Affectionate laughter rippled around the room, and a reporter, catching the mood, called out: "Not today, you're not."

Improbable Week. The press conference over, Chris Herter boarded the Army helicopter that had brought him to Augusta, and flew back to the sprawling South Carolina cattle ranch where he had gone with Mrs. Herter to catch a few days' secluded rest before taking over as Secretary of State. In bygone days at the 12,000-acre retreat (owned by Mrs. Herter's family, and called Cheeha-Combahee after two nearby rivers), Herter used to hunt duck, quail, deer, fox or raccoon from early to late. But years ago, osteoarthritis of the hip joints forced him to give up strenuous sports for such sedentary recreations as playing bridge (he once bid and made a grand slam with President-elect Dwight Eisenhower) and reading whodunits, a passion he shares with John Foster Dulles.

If it seemed improbably strange that a man should be plucked from an out-of-the-way Carolina ranch by helicopter to be designated Secretary of State by a tee-bound President at a Georgia golf course, that strangeness was only characteristic of Christian Herter's improbable week and curious career. It seemed improbable that Christian Herter should come to be Secretary of State at all: he arrived at that lofty crag of responsibility by a meandering path, full of detours, unlikely twists and obstacles that he sometimes barely managed to clear.

Artistic Bent. Herter was born in Paris, of expatriate artist parents, and the first language he learned was his governess' native German. He was trained not in the law--the staple of U.S. Secretaries of State--but in fine arts, and he originally set out to become an architect and interior decorator.

In deciding on a career in the arts. Herter was following in family footsteps. His German-born grandfather, the first Christian Herter, was an architect and interior decorator who designed and lavishly adorned the Fifth Avenue mansions of such gilded-age moguls as J.P. Morgan and William H. Vanderbilt. In his early 40s, having piled up a million of his own, Grandfather Herter said farewell to his family and went off to live in Paris, where a few years later he died of tuberculosis, leaving behind a sadly dwindled fortune and two gifted sons. Son Christian (uncle of Christian Archibald) became an eminent New York surgeon-biologist, suggested to John D. Rockefeller the idea of creating the Rockefeller Institute for Medical Research. Strapping son Albert inherited the artistic bent, went to Paris to study painting, grew the inevitable beard, married an aspiring American painter named Adele McGinnis, stayed on in Paris as a bohemian expatriate for several years before going home to the U.S. and a prosperous career as a muralist.

Giggle at First Sight. Young Christian, born to Albert and Adele Herter in Paris, grew to be a strikingly tall, alarmingly thin lad who had to wear hip-high steel leg braces for six years to correct a curvature of the spine--forerunner of the osteoarthritis that was to afflict him in later years. ("I had no trouble with it for 40 years. Then it came back. Retribution, I guess.") He became a passable golfer, tennis and baseball player during his Harvard years (he is still an avid Boston Red Sox fan), but despite these normalities, many of his Harvard classmates found him a bit odd, with his string-bean shape and undeviating interest in the arts. Classmates recall that he showed scant interest in the two fields where he was to win success, politics and foreign affairs. Said one old Harvard chum a few years back: "He was the last man in the class we would have imagined becoming Governor of Massachusetts."

Chris also seemed a bit odd, at first sight, to Standard Oil Heiress Mary Caroline Pratt when she met him on a blind date. "He was a great, gangling thing with a cap and plus fours," she recalls. "All I could do was stand and giggle." Four years later they were married.*

A Night in Jail. After graduation from Harvard, cum laude, Chris enrolled at the Columbia University architecture school and New York's School of Applied Design. But at his class's first reunion back at Harvard, in 1916, a classmate who was about to leave for a minor post in the U.S. embassy in Berlin told the aspiring architect about another opening at the embassy, urged him to apply for it. A week later young Herter sailed for Europe with his friend.

Herter served as a fledgling diplomat in Berlin and then in German-occupied Brussels, spent a night in jail in 1917 when he was arrested as a suspected spy shortly after the U.S. got into the war.

"Where Cockroaches Abound." Chris Herter tried to join the Army in 1917, but was turned down for being too tall and too skinny, instead took the Foreign Service exams. On the day he was notified that he had passed, he learned that his brother Everit, one year older, had been killed by German shrapnel. In his grief, Christian Herter (who is convinced that his brother would have been a great painter if he had lived) resolved somehow to spend his life working toward the cause of world peace.

At the Versailles peace conference, where he met two other promising diplomats named Foster and Allen Dulles, Herter served as aide to U.S. Delegate Joseph Clark Grew. After Versailles, he was in on the birth of foreign aid, traveling around hungry, war-torn Europe as an assistant to Food Commissioner Herbert Hoover. When Hoover became Commerce Secretary under Harding in 1921, he tapped Herter as an assistant.

Only his loyalty to Hoover kept idealistic Chris Herter in Warren Harding's Washington for nearly four years. "Washington is like a dirty kitchen where cockroaches abound," Herter wrote afterward. After getting out of the kitchen in 1924, he spent several unpaid years as co-owner and co-editor of the venerable (founded in 1848), unprofitable Independent, self-styled "Journal of Free Opinion." In Independent editorials, Herter crusaded for clean government, urged the U.S. to "shed its isolationist fears" and join the League of Nations. In 1929-30, after selling his interest in the Independent, he lectured at Harvard on international relations. Then, by what he calls a "pure fluke," he got into politics.

That Indefinable Something. Even apart from the good fortune of being born to culture and marrying wealth, Christian Herter has displayed over the years what 18th century Author Horace Walpole called "serendipity"--the gift (possessed by the heroes of an old tale, The Three Princes of Serendip) of finding good things without having to seek them. He has never sought a new job, says Herter, because he always liked whatever he was doing; he was often urged or invited. "Almost every step I've taken," he says, "was a pure fluke."

Herter stepped into politics when the longtime representative from Boston's upper-crust Fifth Ward decided to retire from the state legislature. He knew and liked Herter, and so did the ward's Republican leader, who had roomed with Chris at Harvard. Talked into running, Herter won. Aristocratic, sometimes aloof Christian Herter, a fellow politician once said, "never did have that indefinable something that makes children and dogs follow him down the street"--but he has never lost an election.

Ugly Realities. Herter did a shining job during his twelve years in the legislature, rose to be speaker of the lower house during his last four years, 1939-43. "He was the best parliamentarian the legislature ever had," says Democrat John Powers, now president of the state senate. In 1942, at the urging of Massachusetts Republicans who wanted to unseat an isolationist G.O.P. Congressman, Herter agreed to run for Congress, scraped by with some help from that old Massachusetts political custom, a gerrymander of his district.*

Congressman Herter's most important achievement was helping to sell the U.S., especially skeptical Midwestern Republicans, on the Marshall Plan idea. In 1947 Herter proposed creation of a special Select Committee on Foreign Aid, became its chairman, shrewdly arranged that its 17 members should include a sprinkling of deep-dyed isolationists. Leading his committee on an allwork, no-play tour of war-ravaged Europe, he saw to it that his fellow Congressmen got an eye-opening look at the ugly realities of postwar Europe. Result: the Herter committee's reports came out so staunchly for aid to Europe that the Marshall Plan won sturdy bipartisan support. "Without the Herter committee's groundwork," said a top Washington aidman. "the program of foreign aid would never have been passed."

Long-Shot Chance. Herter was often riled during his Capitol Hill years by isolationist speeches of fellow Republicans. "If the Republican Party is going to survive," he warned in 1942, "it must be represented by as many individuals with a worldwide outlook as the party can find. Abandonment of isolationism is the Republican Party's main issue." Spotting Dwight Eisenhower as a man with the worldwide outlook that the G.O.P. needed, Herter visited him in Europe in 1951 and urged him to run. He had the courage to give Ike some blunt advice: "If you think there's going to be an Eisenhower draft at the convention, coming from the grass roots, you're very much mistaken . . . You've got to let your friends know where you stand."

Soon after Herter got back to the U.S., he had to listen to some fervent urging himself: a group of top Massachusetts Republicans insisted that it was his party duty to run for Governor against brass-lunged Democrat Paul Dever. Herter protested angrily: he liked his job and his prospects on the House Foreign Affairs Committee, did not much care to give it up for a long-shot chance at an office that he did not really want. But in the end he agreed to run. Boston bookmakers gave odds as long as 10 to 3 against him.

Heavy Shillelagh. In his campaign against Dever, Herter showed a hard streak that surprised many of his friends. He called Dever a "British-type socialist" (an extra-heavy shillelagh among Boston Irish), belabored his administration as the "most powerful, wasteful, callous, boss-ridden outfit that ever shamed this state." In the 1952 Eisenhower landslide, Herter squeaked into office. Ike's margin in Massachusetts: 208,000; Herter's: 14,456.

Ex-Legislator Herter was remarkably successful in getting along with his legislature, got through a program that trimmed expenditures, streamlined administration, slowed the state's loss of industry by tax incentives and improved "business climate." When he ran for a second term in 1954, his winning margin soared to 75,252. ("As Governor," grouses a friend, "he wouldn't even fix a library card for you.") In 1956, as an outstanding G.O.P. Governor, Herter reluctantly got involved in a Herter-for-President-if-Ike-decides-not-to-run movement, and then was dragged into fancy-free Harold Stassen's Herter-instead-of-Nixon drive. Herter slapped Stassen down by making a nominating speech for Nixon at the 1956 G.O.P. Convention.

The Shadow of No. 1. Shortly after he announced that he would not run for a third term in '56, Governor Herter got a call from John Foster Dulles. Would Herter be willing to come to Washington and work under Dulles as Under Secretary? Eager to get back into his chosen field after the long governorship detour, Herter gladly said yes.

Now and then during his first year as the State Department's No. 2 man, Herter regretted that yes. Strong-minded Foster Dulles was so toweringly No. 1 at State that No. 2 inevitably found himself uncomfortably overshadowed--especially after having been No. 1 for four years in his own Massachusetts bailiwick.

With his innate sense of what is fitting, Herter kept himself in the background during his first few months at State, listened much and talked little. After the often grating brusqueness of Herbert Hoover Jr., his predecessor as Under Secretary, Herter's unflagging courtesy and willingness to listen boosted departmental morale. But his occasional exasperated "goddams" packed a wallop. Gradually, State Department hands came to see that behind Herter's gentleness was a strong and tenacious mind. "I learned one thing," reported an Assistant Secretary after emerging from Herter's office. "You've got to know every last detail when you talk to this guy."

Professional Polish. Even though he had the added job of running the Administration-wide Operations Control Board, Herter began feeling restless about having, as he saw it, too small a role in State Department decisionmaking. When the gossip about Herter's frustration broke out in the papers, Dulles began gradually turning over to Herter some broad sectors of responsibility: congressional relations, inter-American affairs, the Middle East, nuclear-test-ban negotiations. Even in these sectors, Dulles and the President still made the top-level decisions (sending troops to Lebanon, suspending U.S. nuclear tests for one year), but Herter handled the day-to-day conduct of policy. Herter, for example, drafted the directives for the U.S. test-ban negotiating team at Geneva and their drastic revision last week (see Foreign Relations).

In mid-February. Herter was prowling around a cattle auction in Walterboro, S.C. when he got word that Dulles wanted to talk to him on the telephone. He took the call on an old-fashioned wall phone, got the word from Dulles that he was heading off for Walter Reed Hospital for his hernia operation. "Don't rush back," said Dulles. "If you do, they'll think I'm worse than I am--and if I am that bad, you'll need the rest to handle the work."

As he took over as Acting Secretary, Herter strained to avoid even the faintest appearance of grasping for his ailing boss's job. He refused, for example, to hold a single press conference. But Herter liked the job, and his friends knew it. After he sat in as the U.S. delegate at the NATO foreign ministers' meeting in Washington (TIME, April 13), he won high praise for his professional polish from some of Europe's top diplomats.

Unique Esteem. In carrying out U.S. foreign policy as Secretary of State, Herter will have the help of an experienced, brainy team that is regarded in Washington as by far the ablest crew in any Cabinet department. The top crewmen:

P: C. Douglas Dillon, 49, sometime Ambassador to France, who came to diplomacy from investment banking (Dillon, Read), is now Under Secretary of State for Economic Affairs and Herter's probable replacement as No. 2 man.

P: Robert D. Murphy, 64, tough-minded, old-pro troubleshooter (TIME, Aug. 25), Deputy Under Secretary for Political Affairs.

P: Loy W. Henderson, 66, Deputy Under Secretary for Administration, another careerman who has held the posts of envoy extraordinary and Ambassador to Iraq, India, Nepal and Iran.

P: Livingston T. Merchant. 55, Assistant Secretary for European Affairs, former Ambassador to Canada.

P: G. Frederick Reinhardt, 47, counselor of the department, former Ambassador to South Viet Nam.

P: William M. Rountree, 42, Assistant Secretary for Near Eastern, South Asian and African Affairs, his specialty since the early 1940s.

The first-rate team behind him assures that Secretary of State Herter will get sound counsel and assistance, but it will be Herter himself who must make the top decisions and carry out the top negotiations. Inevitably, last week the often-asked question was: How does Herter compare with Dulles?

Dulles had a special advantage that Christian Herter, in the less than two years ahead of him as Secretary of State, cannot hope to match: the unique and towering esteem, slowly built up over years, that Dwight Eisenhower felt for Dulles. But Herter has an advantage of his own: abundant political experience. As an ex-Congressman and a winning politician, he knows something about handling storms of congressional or public opinion. He is liked and admired on Capitol Hill, notably by the Senate Foreign Relations Committee's Chairman William Fulbright, who weeks ago started boosting Herter for Secretary of State.

"A Margin of Time." The differences between Dulles and Herter are likely to be matters of style rather than substance. Partly because of his arthritis, Herter will do a lot less traveling than Dulles did, leave more of the overseas work to aides. Herter will doubtless rely much more than Dulles did on staff work and conferences within the State Department; while Dulles is a man of strong opinions who can be persuaded to change, Herter is a man who makes up his mind after listening to all sides. On European affairs there is no substantive difference between the two men's views (but sensitive Far Eastern experts noted during the Quemoy crisis of mid-1957 that the State Department's Herter was privately urging the evacuation of Quemoy and Matsu). Like Dulles, Herter believes that U.S. foreign policy must pursue, as Herter put it in a recent speech, "a positive approach which accepts competition and danger as elements of survival."

But in emphasis, Herter may be more acutely concerned than Dulles with the currents of change in the uncommitted nations, and the importance of influencing those currents through foreign aid, cultural exchange and persuasion. "The more significant changes taking place below the surface level of events," he said in a speech last December, "are being effected not by violence and military means but by more subtle forms of indirect aggression and the force of ideas. [The U.S. must not] take for granted the uneasy stages of truce in which we find ourselves at present, for a truce is not a resting but a working period. It represents a margin of time in which we must try to win."

Too Nice a Guy? The only big reservation about Christian Herter voiced last week by men who know him was a lingering doubt whether he has enough of the toughness of mind and spirit that Dulles had in abundance, and that Dulles' successor will urgently need amid the risks and challenges of the cold war. The adjectives that people who know him apply to Christian Herter are words of praise--gentlemanly, kind, courteous--but they do not necessarily imply the essential qualities needed in a Secretary of State in 1959-60. Nor do Herter's own "watchwords," picked up long ago from a Chinese saying: gentleness, frugality, humility.

But over the years, as in his bareknuckle campaign against Paul Dever, Herter has shown that, when he needs it, he has a streak of stern resolution beneath the gentle surface. In politics he was, a Massachusetts Democratic politico admiringly recalls, "a real Yankee trader who'd give you an apple for an orchard and make you think you got a good deal." Adds another Bay Streeter, who has known Herter for decades: "There are some people who would say he's too nice a guy for the job. It's not true. Believe me, he can be tough and hard when he needs to be."

In his lofty post during the next two years, gentlemanly Christian Herter will need that capacity to be, now and then, tough and hard--and a touch of serendipity may be useful, too.

* The Herters have four children: Christian Jr., defeated candidate for Massachusetts attorney general in last fall's elections; Frederic, New York surgeon; Miles, Massachusetts business executive; Adele, amateur painter and wife of a New York pathologist. Number of grandchildren: 14.

*The original gerrymander was carried out in Essex County, Mass, in 1812 under Governor Elbridge Gerry.

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