Good Man

To many apprehensive Americans in xenophobic 1941, the new British ambassador, Lord Halifax, was unwelcome.

He was too aloof, too much the quiet, impenetrable aristocrat. He was not in any sense a guy Brooklyn would go for. Worse, he was a Chamberlain man--one of the men of Munich. Why had Churchill sent him, anyhow? Forecasting his mission, people called him "Lord Holy Fox" and quoted Anglophobe Quincy Howe: "England expects every American to do his duty."

After five years and four months of Halifax, the U.S. knew him better. He had ridden out boos and picket lines. In Detroit, when angry, isolationist groups of U.S. mothers had thrown eggs and tomatoes at him, Lord Halifax had replied: "Let them have a good time for their money." The Nazis had killed one of his three sons in Egypt; another had lost both legs in the battle of Alamein. The U.S. gradually came to respect, and almost to like, his stiff upper lip.

Unlike most former British ambassadors, he made a manful effort to familiarize himself with every state in the union. He hunted coyotes in Oklahoma, stood on the rim of the Grand Canyon, and had his picture taken in a fireman's hat.

The results were sometimes as painful as the pictures of Coolidge in an Indian war bonnet. Lord Halifax remained just as quiet, just as impenetrable, just as incomprehensible to the nation's Brooklyns and Broadways. Halifax never said or did anything very startling, but his patient kindness, that at first seemed to some the mere mask of condescension, convinced the U.S. at last that it was the genuine article. The U.S. decided that Halifax would never be at home in a ball park, but he was good goods. Brooklyn and Broadway knew that he could take it. Now that he was going home,* the U.S. discovered that it was sorry to see him go.

"Evasive Action." This week, Lord Halifax made a farewell speech before the Pilgrims society in Manhattan. Said he: "I felt I could not pretend to any knowledge of this vast and varied country unless I had seen as much of all of it as was compatible with the claims of my work in Washington. ... By travel I acquired a truer sense of proportion about Anglo-American relations, about my work, and even about myself.

"A boy came along the [train] corridor with a bunch of magazines he was selling. ... He came in and sat with me for half an hour and we had quite a talk about books and reading generally. At the end of our conversation he told me ... he would like to give me something he greatly valued. Whereupon he unpinned a badge he was wearing, which carried the words 'MacArthur for President,' and pinned it on the lapel of my coat. [Thereafter] when the boy passed my room, I proudly displayed the badge; when anyone else came along, I took evasive action with a pocket handkerchief.

"As we came out of [a Midwest club], my secretary overheard a snatch of conversation between two of the older members. One said, 'It has been fine having the British Ambassador here.' The reply: 'Yes, we haven't seen a steak like that in the club for two years.' ... I might add the memory of a man who wrote to my son after a similar informal gathering: 'I always thought the British were apt to outsmart us until I listened to Lord Halifax. Now I know it is not true.' "

Top-level Washington could best evaluate Halifax's long mission, and how well he had accomplished it--in Lend-Lease, joint command, victory and the possibility of United Nations. He had certainly done his best. History might yet surprise the newspapers by writing him down as one of the great ambassadors. The U.S. he was leaving would remember him as a good man.

*Crack British Career Diplomat, Lord Inver-chapel (formerly Sir Archibald Clark Kerr), succeeds to the U.S. ambassadorship May 1.

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