Diplomatic Shuffle

Drawn and shuffled and dealt out anew, last week, were a whole pack of Ambassadors, Ministers, Special Agents, a World Jurist and a Governor General.

Prior to sorting out events and titles, keen observers sharpened their wits by trying to identify as many face cards as possible in the following well shuffled hand of potent names:

Saint Sze Bliss

Millspaugh Filipowicz

Root Sacasa MacWhite

Cretziano Howard Herrick

Dr. Alfred Sze has so quaint a name that most people picked him first out of the shuffle. Though his parents called him Chao-chi, he has been Alfred, and even "Al." since he edited The Cornellian at Cornell (circa 1900).

Last week, brilliant, rich and potent Chinaman Sze received a cablegram at Washington where he has been Chinese Minister for eight years. At once socially popular Mme. Sze told her servants to pack--everything! Priceless bronzes, her own superb gowns, the first and second best Ming vases, and Dr. Sze's well-worn poker chips--everything!

Soon smart Washington will miss the deceptively nervous gentleman who wins so often but so charmingly and wittily at bridge, too. Diplomatic Washington will remember the master negotiant who won so much for China at President Harding's Nine Power conference.* for the cablegram told Dr. Sze to cross the Atlantic and resume the post of Chinese Minister at London, which he held throughout the War. Of the six Sze offspring (4 girls), half are being educated on each side of the Atlantic. Thus, although Dr. and Mrs. Sze will leave Maimie at Wellesley, where she was coxswain and captain of the Freshman crew last spring (TIME, April 9), they will find their two sons in England, the elder Cambridge graduated and studying medicine, the other still in "public school. /-" They will take two daughters, find one.

Elihu Root who has been everything from U. S. Secretary of State (1905-1909) to Trustee of the New York Public Library and winner of the Nobel Peace Prize, accepted an invitation from the league of Nations, last week, and will sit on a commission called to revise the statutes of the World Court.

Lucient Saint, ruthless French Resident General of Tunis, was transferred, last week, to be Resident General of French Morocco, amid covert Tunisian glee.

Michael MacWhite, famed "Frenchified Fighting Irishman'' was appointed to be Irish Free State Minister at Washington.

When the World War broke out, Mr. MacWhite was prodded and hustled out of a French railway car at Lyons, so that the car might be used to rush poilus to the front. Stranded but not downhearted, Irish Michael MacWhite joined the French Foreign Legion, fought all over the Balkans, and commanded the last French division to be withdrawn from Serbia. Presently the French Government sent him lecturing through the U. S.

Latterly Mr. MacWhite has been Irish Free State Delegate to the League of Nations.

Myron Timothy Herrick, beloved and Francophile U. S. Ambassador to France, sailed from Manhattan last week--as usual on the French Liner Isle de France-- to resume his post in Paris. Pale, he had just recovered from one more severe illness at his home in Chagrin Falls, near Cleveland.

George Cretziano, suave Rumanian Minister to the U. S., was ordered to swap posts with peppery Carol Davila, Rumanian Minister to Poland. The order was part of a general reshuffle of Rumanian diplomats, drastically begun last week by the new Peasant Prime Minister of Rumania, Juliu Maniu (TIME, Nov. 19).

Titus Filipowicz, intimate crony of Poland's dictator, swashbuckling Marshal Pilsudski, was appointed envoy to the U. S., following the resignation of Minister Jan Ciechanowski "for personal reasons."

Robert Woods Bliss, socially elect "career man" and U. S. Ambassador to Argentina, was able to set out last week on a vacation which he had been forced to abandon temporarily when President-Elect Herbert Hoover decided to junket around South America (TIME, Nov. 26 et seq.). Originally Mr. Bliss planned to join Mrs. Bliss in Europe; but she has now crossed the Atlantic and the U. S. to California. Therefore, as Ambassador Bliss left Buenos Aires, last week, he headed not for Paris but for San Francisco.

Sir Esme Howard, popular Ambassador of Great Britain to the U. S. and Dean of the Diplomatic Corps at Washington, had his nearly expired term of five years extended, last week, to six.

Arthur Chester Millspaugh, who was Administrator General of Persian Finances until he quarreled with the Finance Minister of King Rega Pahlevi (TIME, Aug. 8, 1927), resigned last week as Financial Ad viser to the Republic of Haiti, a post which he has held since 1927. Ever inclined to be secretive, Professor Mills paugh declined to indicate the reason.

Juan Batista Sacasa was regarded, two years ago, as little better than a Nicaraguan bandit. Although he deemed himself the constitutional President of Nicaragua (TIME, Nov. 29, 1926), his Government was not recognized by the Coolidge Administration, and his repeated contentions that his party (Liberal) comprised a majority of the Nicaraguan electorate was ignored.

Therefore President Calvin Coolidge sent U. S. Marines to intervene in Nicaragua and supervise a "fair election." The election resulted in a Liberal majority, and in the choosing of a Liberal President of Nicaragua (TIME, Nov. 12) exactly as predicted two years ago by Juan Batista Sacasa.

Accordingly Senor Sacasa was sent last week as Nicaraguan Minister to Washington.

*A "secret" of the conference which can now be told. One of the two Chinese delegates, Dr. Wellington Koo and Dr. Alfred Sze, appeared with a superbly ornate fountain pen which disappeared soon after he loaned it to the other. Correspondents think they know what happened to the pen. Think they noticed that the two statesmen were temporarily estranged, stranger than fiction though the story is.

/-English Synonym for what U. S. Citizens mean by "private school."