A Good Risk

Lew Douglas' career in public service began one night in 1922, in the roistering, hillside copper-mining town of Jerome (Ariz.), when a group of citizens sought out a begrimed, grinning mucker and asked him to run for the state legislature on the Democratic ticket. Since then, Lewis W. (for Williams) Douglas, 52, has been led far afield from his chosen career in mining. Last week, President Truman called him from the presidency of the Mutual Life Insurance Co. of New York to be United States Ambassador to England. He will succeed North Carolina's O. Max Gardner, who died on the day of his departure for London.

For Harry Truman, the choice of Douglas marked a widening breach with the New Deal. Douglas was Franklin Roosevelt's first director of the budget, but the New Deal was not two years old when he resigned in bitter protest against its policy of deficit spending. He backed Landon in 1936, helped organize the "Democrats for Willkie" in 1940. The New Deal domestic policy seemed to him to be verging on "tyranny."

But if Franklin Roosevelt had no more bitter foe at home, he had no more ardent supporter abroad. Douglas was one of the first to warn against the rise of Hitlerism. He went back into Government service, first as Lend-Lease expediter in London, then as Deputy War Shipping Administrator. As London's News

Chronicle'recalled: "Britain's cause never had a stouter friend."

Arizona Roots. When the call to the ambassadorship came last week, Lew Douglas was in Phoenix which he still calls home. His family roots are deep in Arizona's arid soil. His grandfather left Scotland and a career as a scholar to go prospecting, and hit the jackpot with the fabulous Copper Queen mine at Bisbee. His father, "Rawhide Jim" Douglas, discovered the U.V.X. mine.

Lew's childhood was spent in mining towns of Arizona and Mexico. He went east for his education at Amherst* and M.I.T. After five years in Arizona's mines, with time out for service in the state legislature, he moved up to Washington and the House of Representatives. He was there when F.D.R. met him and marked him for his Budget Director. Since 1934, he has been vice president of American Cyanimid, principal of Montreal's McGill University, and president of Mutual.

No Funeral Wreaths. A rugged-faced man with quizzical brown eyes and an air of engaging diffidence, he won unanimous approval from the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. The British, fed up with the transatlantic funeral wreaths hurled at them lately, were delighted when he stated that their character was "too strong" to succumb to their present difficulties.

But England's biggest concern would be the new Ambassador's attitude toward her dollar difficulties. If the British remembered F.D.R.'s remark that Douglas seemed more concerned with dollars than humanity, if they were concerned over his dislike for a controlled economy, they could stop worrying. Lew Douglas was an internationalist first, a "hardmoney" man second. Said he: "England is a good risk. But it will be a sorry, sorry day ultimately for this nation when we condition our loans solely on whether they are good risks or not."

* Where he was a classmate of John J. McCloy, appointed last week as head of the World Bank (see BUSINESS). Douglas and McCloy married sisters.

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