New Envoys

Kennedy nominees bound for New Frontier outposts as ambassadors: India: John Kenneth Galbraith, 52, Harvard economics professor, veteran Kennedy brain-truster, author of The Affluent Society. A big-picture thinker of considerable stature (6 ft. 8 in.), Galbraith has, since the inauguration, been making himself useful in Washington as a word man, supplying Kennedy speeches and other New Frontier documents with what he describes as "touches of the cosmetic or the cosmic." Ceylon: Frances Elizabeth Willis. 60, currently Ambassador to Norway. Stanford Ph.D. ('23) Frances Willis was the Foreign Service's first career woman to become an ambassador (to Switzerland in 1953), will find in Ceylon another woman who has risen high in a normally male domain: Prime Minister Sirimavo Bandaranaike, widow of the late Prime Minister Solomon West Ridgway Bias Bandaranaike, who has exhibited a mind of her own in leading Ceylon down the neutralist path.

Japan: Edwin Oldfather Reischauer, 50, director of Harvard's Center for East Asian Studies. Born in Japan (of U.S.

parents) and married to a Japanese, Scholar-Diplomat Reischauer served in the State Department in the 19405, has authored an armful of books on the Orient. The man who will be reading his dispatches, as the new Assistant Secretary of State for Far Eastern Affairs is Walter P. McConaughy, Foreign Service career-man now winding up a hitch as Ambassador to Korea.

Thailand: Kenneth Todd Young, 44, Southeast Asia expert for New York's Standard Vacuum Oil Co. Another Harvardman,* Young served in the State and Defense Departments as an Asia specialist for twelve years before departing for the better-paying pastures of private business.

At his new post in Bangkok, he succeeds Careerman U. Alexis Johnson, who returns to Foggy Bottom to be Deputy Under Secretary of State for Political Affairs.

Viet Nam: Frederick E. Nolting Jr., 50, deputy U.S. representative on the Paris-headquartered North Atlantic Council. Nolting started out in an investment firm in his native Richmond, found his horizons broadened by wartime overseas service in the Navy, joined the State Department at war's end, has specialized in Western Europe.

Italy: G. Frederick Reinhardt, 49, now Ambassador to the United Arab Republic. Handsome Careerman Freddie Reinhardt speaks fluent Italian, was smoothly effective as Ike's ambassador to newly partitioned Viet Nam in 1955-56.

Denmark: William McCormick Blair Jr., 44, lawyer with no diplomatic experience. Second cousin of the Chicago Tribune's late publisher, Colonel Robert McCormick, moneyed Bill Blair served as administrative assistant to Illinois Governor Adlai Stevenson, became his law partner, campaign manager and general political handyman.

The Netherlands: John Stanley Rice. 61, wealthy Pennsylvania applegrower, state Democratic chairman. Mild-mannered John Rice kept his feet through the roughhouse of state politics for some 30 years, served as a state senator, was an unsuccessful nominee for Governor in 1946. And that is the extent of his diplomatic experience.

Chile: Robert Forbes Woodward, 52, currently Ambassador to Uruguay. Able Bob Woodward has spent nearly all of his 30-year State Department career in Latin American affairs, managing to retain an unruffled Minnesota disposition.

Israel: Walworth Barbour, 52, Foreign Service careerman since 1931. Familiar with the Middle East from early service in Cairo and Baghdad, Harvardman Barbour served for four years as John Foster Dulles' chief specialist on Eastern European affairs, takes off for Israel from five prestige-building years as Deputy Chief of Mission in London.

Jordan: William Butts Macomber Jr., 39, Assistant Secretary of State for Congressional Relations. Once retired in a State Department personnel cutback, Yaleman Macomber returned as special assistant to Under Secretary Herbert Hoover Jr. and, later, to Secretary Dulles. His departure for the Middle East will reduce Washington's already short supply of eligible bachelors.

Iran: Julius C. Holmes, 61, Minister Consul General in Hong Kong. Kansan Holmes has had a wide-ranging career. He joined the Foreign Service in 1925, left in 1937 to become a vice president of the New York World's Fair, rose to brigadier general in the Army during World War II, went into the shipping business after the war, rejoined the State Department in 1948. He almost got to be Ambassador to Iran in 1955, when President Eisenhower named him to the post, but Delaware's perpetually scandalized Republican Senator John J. Williams blocked Senate confirmation because Holmes had once been indicted for involvement in a deal in which businessmen bought surplus ships cheap from the U.S. Government and illegally transferred them to foreign owners. The court dismissed the charges against Holmes, who said his indictment was the result of a "ghastly mistake."

* Totting up the number of Harvardmen (graduates or faculty) in the upper reaches of the Kennedy Administration, the Harvard Alumni Bulletin counted 3O-odd in the 85 top federal jobs--including five posts of Cabinet rank.

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