Herrick Flayed

The charge that he is a Francophile would perhaps not be denied by the present U. S. Ambassador to France, famed Clevelander Myron Timothy Herrick.

The Ambassador likes France, loves to advise and help Frenchmen, has helped a great deal, often with large cash contributions to French charities and War reconstructions.

Therefore Mr. Herrick must have received with pain, last week, a thoroughgoing flaying administered by M. Andre Geraud, famed as "Pertinax," redoubtable Foreign Editor of L'Echo de Paris. Seizing upon a rumor that the Ambassador was about to resign, "Pertinax" apostrophized :

"Dear American friends, we humbly beg you to appoint some one who will abstain rigorously from sentimentalism and who quite simply from day to day will keep us informed as to what you really are thinking."

Explaining, "Pertinax" went on to charge that Ambassador Herrick has been "so good a friend to France" as to have unwittingly deceived her statesmen by his own Francophility into th King that the U. S. would:

1) Cancel most of the French War debts;

2) Sign an exclusive two-power pact renouncing war with France.

As everyone knows, Ambassador Herrick carried this latter proposal personally from French Foreign Minister Aristide Briand to U. S. Secretary of State Kellogg (TIME, July 4). The refusal of Mr. Kellogg to sit down to diplomatic tea for two with M. Briand and his subsequent invitation to all nations to sign a multi-power pact has constituted one of the most distasteful rebuffs suffered by French diplomacy since the War.

Doubtless anticipated by "Pertinax," last week, was an immediate denial from Ambassador Herrick that he intends to resign.