Sir Ronald's Well-Sharpened Portraits

IN the diplomat's trade, euphemism is the rule and waspish apothegms a rarity. The late Sir Ronald Lindsay, British Ambassador to Washington from 1930 through 1939, turns out to have been one of those uncommon envoys with a sharply pointed pencil. He was a career diplomat, the fifth son of an earl; he was first married to the daughter of a U.S. Senator, and after her death wed another American. In his last Washington years, he worked to strengthen Anglo-American ties as World War II approached.

Almost 2,000 volumes of once confidential government papers were made public in London last week under a law that permits their disclosure after a period of 30 years. Among them were Sir Ronald's pithy 1939 memoranda to the Foreign Office in London about prominent Americans of the day. Some of his characterizations:

Franklin D. Roosevelt: A "baffling character" with "the strength of an ox, enormously charming but a poor judge of men. He appears to be extremely obstinate and to dislike opposition. His intellectual powers are really only moderate and his knowledge of certain subjects, particularly finance and economics, is superficial."

Herbert Hoover: Probably "the most abused man in the U.S., without the power to turn on a cheerful smile, to give the glad hand or to make the humorous remark which means so much to a publicity-ridden country."

Assistant Secretary of State Adolf A. Berle Jr.: "100 percent intellectual," but "a specialist in too many subjects to be quite convincing in any one of them." He "had an academic career at Harvard of such distinction that he has never quite recovered from it."

Henry Cabot Lodge Jr., then 37 and a Senator from Massachusetts: "He is rather pompous for his age and decidedly interested first and foremost in his own career."

Idaho's Republican Senator William Borah, an avowed isolationist: "He is almost an ideal Senator, with no desire to put forward constructive ideas, but always anxious so to frame his utterances that he will afterwards be able to prove that he was right and everyone else was wrong."

Perennial Presidential Adviser Bernard Baruch: His "commanding characteristic, apart from his undoubted shrewdness, is his vanity, an amiable weakness upon which the politicians of his party have frequently endeavored to play."

Colonel Charles A. Lindbergh: "He gives the impression of modesty and charm, but many people who know him personally dislike him on the ground that he is moody."

Henry Ford: In politics, he "has seldom been taken seriously," but "he has an interesting and sympathetic face and manner, looking rather like an ascetic saint."

James A. Farley, then Chairman of the Democratic National Committee: He "neither drinks nor smokes, but chews gum." In New York, "some regard him as 'honest,' others as a politician of Machiavellian subtlety. The correct estimate of him is probably somewhere about midway between these two extremes."

Columnist Walter Lippmann: "Quick to resent any British assumptions of superiority," but one of the "clearest-thinking journalists and among the most influential in the U.S."

Publisher William Randolph Hearst: His Anglophobia comes "from no particular aversion to Great Britain, except at moments when he remembers that in England he counts for nothing and is systematically (and rightly) ignored. He would probably like to be pro-British often and long enough to obtain a permanent fooling on some aristocratic level."

The Chicago Tribune's Colonel Robert McCormick: "Stubborn, slow-thinking and bellicose, with a definite anti-British bias, which rumor attributes to the fact that he is still resentful of the canings he received whilst a schoolboy at Eton."

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