Yankee Internationalist

Born in Paris, reared in New York and Boston, and by his mid-20s a veteran of diplomatic service in World War I Europe, Christian Herter was equipped as few other statesmen to revivify the crumbling Atlantic Alliance. Yet when he succeeded John Foster Dulles as Secretary of State in 1959, his reward was frustration.

In the last 21 months of the Eisenhower Administration, there were too many crises to permit any bold initiatives in Washington's dealings with either allies or foes. Soviet pressure on Berlin was a constant threat. Relations with Castro's Cuba continued to deteriorate. Laos tottered, the Congo fell apart, and Gary Powers' spy plane crashed on Soviet soil. With the U-2 fell whatever hopes Herter still held for the Paris summit conference. When he left office, one aide recalls, he was "an unhappy man."

Prostrate Continent. Despite disappointment, despite the continually worsening arthritis that cruelly contorted his gangling 6-ft. 4 1/2-in. frame and made him dependent on metal crutches or a wheelchair, Christian Herter was not one for retirement. When he died at 71 of a pulmonary embolism in his Washington home, he was still striving for international agreement--this time to lower tariffs--as the President's Special Representative for Trade Negotiations. That effort, too, proved endlessly frustrating.

Yet it was not through hard work and good intentions alone that Herter influenced postwar history. After the Truman Administration proposed the broad outlines of the Marshall Plan in June 1947, the Bostonian, then a Republican Congressman, proposed establishment of a House Special Select Committee on Foreign Aid and became its chairman. After two grueling months of surveying Western Europe's plight--Herter had directed the members to leave wives and tuxedos at home--the committee wrote a compelling, detailed report on what was needed to revive the prostrate continent. Above all, it was Herter's support and advocacy, along with Arthur Vandenberg's in the Senate, that forged the bipartisan coalition without which the Marshall Plan could never have become U.S. policy.

Between Poles. Herter also had a winning record as a Bay State politician --even though he fell between the poles of Brahmin Republicanism and Irish-dominated Democratic power. Son of artists, grandson of a German immigrant who prospered as an architect, Herter himself briefly studied art and architecture. He happened into diplomacy in 1916 upon hearing of an opening in the Berlin embassy. After the war, he worked for Herbert Hoover's Relief Administration in Europe and the Commerce Department in Washington before going back to Boston to write and lecture in support of internationalism. In 1930, he won his first election to the state legislature--he was never to lose in a total of 13 contests--and served in the lower house for six terms, two of them as speaker. Then came ten years in the U.S. House and four in the Governor's mansion. As Governor, Herter won a reputation for clean, efficient, economical rule.

By 1952, in his last year in Congress, Herter was among the Republican leaders who urged Dwight Eisenhower to run for President. Four years later, a handful of insurgents led by Harold Stassen proposed Governor Herter as a replacement for Richard Nixon on the G.O.P. ticket. Herter would have none of it. At the convention, it was he who nominated Nixon for a second term. Nixon reciprocated by helping to secure Herter's appointment as Under Secretary of State instead of the lesser post that Secretary Dulles had intended for him.

When illness forced Dulles' retirement, he recommended Herter as his successor. Eisenhower agreed, though he was less than enthusiastic toward Herter. Nonetheless, they established a close working relationship. As Eisenhower once observed: "When you look at him, you know you are looking at an honest man."

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