A Representative Ambassador

...each independent but all cooperating in the work of the empire...

...Not so in England...

...At first sight such a family tradition on both sides would not seem to be a preparation for the democratic experiment of this modern era...

...The simplicity of the new ideal diplomacy is the simplicity of old Christian principles in application...

...We have had representatives of Great Britain who floated negotiations to success "upon a sea of champagne...

...Lord Bryce, the centre of an intellectual group...

...Taken only as the fourth son of his father, he typifies the essence of that English system which has produced such great administrators in the world: the home remaining in trust to one son, while younger sons go out to make their fortune and add lustre to the family tradition...

...his rapid promotions through the grades of the diplomatic service, and the important negotiations entrusted to him are all truly merited and all real...

...Taken simply as a Catholic, both the power and the vicissitudes of the Howards, together with those of the earls of Newburgh from whom his wife descends, make a tradition deeply rooted in England and in Rome, of faith tried by every circumstance of life, by prosperity as well as by adversity, which is the truest criterion of steadfastness...

...At the head of the wide staircase stood an enormous portrait of the young Queen Victoria in her coronation robes...

...In the bitter religious wars of England, the confessorship of Sir Esme's kinsman Philip Howard, not at all a pious man for a considerable part of his life, stands out in the annals of the Faith...

...It was not to be expected that Ramsay MacDonald would also choose just this tradition to turn a dangerous current and bring about the new liberal era in diplomacy coveted by Labor...

...Sir Esme's administration is symbolic also of the merging of England into the British empire, that original American concept of democratic government...

...There could be very little consolation to those persecuted by their own blood brothers and torn between two loyalties...

...Yet after hearing a public address by Howard that is exactly what he did, seeing in him at once the very man he needed...

...Michael Herbert, a truly lovable character, and as successful because of that as any chief of mission...

...We have had Sir Mortimer Durand whose kindliness and sportsmanship endeared him...

...That transition from England to a British empire was symbolically illustrated recently in the last of Sir Esme's state receptions, before the old house was closed forever...

...In other countries dissenters were organized in minorities too powerful and important to be harassed too continually, like the Huguenots of France...

...patriotism and religious zeal could go hand in hand...

...every one is due to important service better than well done, but they are not the most impressive things in his career...

...His civil and military honors, received in a long public career...

...All of these have been successful and all have wielded great influence, but no British envoy has ever possessed so widely as Sir Esme the confidence of Americans in general nor of so very many people of widely differing politics and prejudices...

...In the past six years it has taken on a new significance for it not only has housed the ambassador...

...I think that concept of the citizen exactly expresses the conduct of Sir Esme Howard's life: the most complete personal simplicity, a deep sense of responsibility for and to others, honesty and justice inherent in his very being...

...The head of the Howards ranks next today after royal blood...

...He was nominated by Stanley Baldwin, Conservative Prime Minister, at a time when there was open and growing dislike of America in England and wide hostility to England here, and British propaganda was feared by many as an insidious poison, threatening our national life...

...A daughter of the first marriage married Prince Giustiniani and her son died a cardinal and the last prince...

...In Ireland where the old faith found such heroic defenders, there was strength for the persecuted in the very fact that the oppressor was also an alien conqueror...

...The old, four-square, Victorian mansion on Connecticut Avenue, in which so much of Anglo-American diplomacy has developed, and four generations of Washingtonians have danced and international romances flourished (one ending in a Visitation convent long ago) has given place to the great new embassy building out on Massachusetts Avenue...

...At the foot stood a seven-foot highlander of the Black Watch, while a piper skirled in the gallery...

...Too many men have gone under in that sharp break climaxed in the world war...

...In 1863, Sir Esme was born in Cumberland, whence so many early American Catholics came, with Lancashire the very centre of Catholic resistance, and at Greystoke Castle with its 17,000 acres spreading over into the neighboring county of Westmoreland...

...Sir Esme symbolizes the new ideals of international relations because the ideals of all time were born in him and are part of his tradition and we are swinging around to them once more after long eclipse...

...one who would, unconsciously, imbue diplomacy with a high spiritual quality...

...Below, beside the Right Honorable Sir Esme Howard, G. C. B., G. C. M. G., C. V. O., stood one Ramsay MacDonald, Labor leader, representative of the new era, Prime Minister of England, thinking perhaps of the new peers of England he must create under the king-emperor, to carry his industrial pension bills to democratic fruition...

...He is one of the few who have bridged smoothly the great chasm, who have brought the old tradition with all its attributes into the new order, fitting perfectly into the best of today's idealism...

...Perhaps these same characteristics of the true diplomatist were never better illustrated than when recently he was host to General Jan Smuts, the great Boer leader, against whom he won his war medal and four citations in the field...

...The old one stood for generations expressing Great Britain...

...Her Scottish ancestress, granddaughter of Sir James, married twice...

...The civilization and culture which were growing here until the middle of the last century did not claim, in spite of the interpretation given to Thomas Jefferson's famous words, that all are equal and must remain equal...

...He expresses, perhaps more perfectly than any, Stanley Baldwin's ideal of what the Conservative should represent in world politics as well as in the post-war reconstruction of England...

...In his six years at Washington he represents in himself the passing and the beginning of an era...

...Her daughters married the Princes Ruspoli and Odescalchi and the Count Sanseverino...

...Yet it is most completely so, and in the sense in which our own United States were founded...

...We recognized, as the Catholic Church recognizes, the nobility of democracy in the sense that men are different, that no barrier must be placed to the utmost development of the worthy and that the weak must be protected and respected...

...In that grouping of characteristics lies the ideal of modern diplomacy as well as citizenship and it is exactly those qualities which have made him the most successful envoy ever sent to Washington by the king of England...

...In 1857 the claim to the earldom of Newburgh and other Scottish titles was allowed to Lady Isabella's grandmother and her father became eighth earl, Pope Pius IX granting to him all his ancestral honors...

...A REPRESENTATIVE AMBASSADOR By WILLIAM FRANKLIN SANDS SIR ESME HOWARD would be exceedingly astonished to be taken as a symbol of anything, yet in fact he is a most striking symbol of a variety of things...

...first the famous Irishman, O'Mahoney, a count of France, and later the brother of the tragic earl of Derwentwater, who was also executed after the rising of 1745...

...Those English Catholics had harder going than any in Europe, between their political loyalty to the England they had built and their spiritual loyalty to the head of their religion...

...His family was known and prominent in Saxon times, before the coming of the Normans in 1066...

...Lady Isabella is descended from that typical cavalier, Sir James Levingston, first earl of Newburgh who followed King Charles into exile...

...Spring-Rice, a capable and a devoted though worried public servant...

...it has been the centre for a new and imposing group, flanked imperially by the Canadian legation under a junior statesman of the first quality, the envoy of the union of South Africa, and the legation of the Irish Free State representing the new blossoming of Ireland...