Washington-U.S.A.
COFFIN, TRIS
WASHINGTON-U.S.A. By Tris Coffin U.S. Friends and Diplomats Abroad An odd habit of Secretary of State John Foster Dulles is giving American foreign policy gas pains. This is his old lawyer's...
...It signed the United Nations report on the Soviet outrages in Hungary...
...Senator Alex Wiley, the ranking Republican, said, "I start out with the presumption that when the nominee comes from the Executive, he is a man of character and ability and so forth...
...He has made a success of life and is a man of good character...
...2, the junior Senator from New York came to me yesterday and he said, 'I want to tell you he is a man of great ability...
...I cannot call it off .. ." Had Gluck been testifying the day after his appointment, there might be some excuse...
...Some days ago Dulles was being questioned on foreign aid by a House committee...
...Up from scratch he built a chain of 140 ladies' ready-to-wear shops in 26 years, made a million dollars ( $30,000 of which he shared with Republican candidates in 1956), bought a 510-acre horse-breeding farm in Kentucky, and has never been accused of harboring subversive thoughts...
...He said primly: "I can assure you that we make every effort to send qualified names here, after many checks that we put them through...
...The Ambassador to the Court of St...
...The purpose of the State Department is to look out for the interests of the United States...
...Harry Truman sent the hostess with the mostes...
...Fulbright: "Do you know who the Prime Minister of India is...
...The Ambassador to Switzerland, Henry J. Taylor, was President Eisenhower's favorite radio commentator...
...The Cairo transmitter in a commentary entitled "Dulles Exposes the Policy of Dulles" crowed: "Let the peoples of the world listen and pay attention to this statement...
...And it has inspired a bill introduced by an impressive bipartisan array of Senators for a Foreign Service academy...
...a former Princeton lecturer, remarked: "I was somewhat troubled that he knew nothing of the area...
...It may be that, in the long run, lawyer Dulles will be able to point with pride to all the reforms accomplished as a result of naming Maxwell Gluck to Ceylon...
...Secretary Dulles did not move in to repair the damage throughout the world...
...The Secretary quickly sized up the jury of shrewd, practical men, and so said: "Not for one minute do I think the purpose of the State Department is to make friends...
...whose brother Benjamin is associated with Gluck in the World Development Corporation, an outfit seeking business for itself around the globe...
...I believe I can—I think I can establish, unless we—again, unless I run into something I have not run into before—a good relationship and good feeling toward the United States...
...Ceylon, where Maxwell Gluck was assigned, is a particularly delicate and sensitive nation at this time...
...Some of the more revealing questions and answers are: Fulbright: "What are the problems in Ceylon you think you can deal with...
...Instead, he sent Herter charging up to the Hill to protest public hearings on the Ambassadorial appointments...
...The Ambassadorships naturally came to mind...
...gluck: "I have a list...
...That may not necessarily be a liability...
...No Assistant Secretaries were needed...
...I don't think we are on the friendliest relations with them, but I believe it can be straightened out a little in one direction, or a little more in another direction, depending on what is done in that country...
...These posts have been sold to high bidders, as Senator William Ful-bright (D.-Ark...
...Wiley retorted: "You can never tell how far a frog can jump until he jumps...
...In accepting Maxwell H. Gluck as Ambassador to Ceylon, the Secretary was trying to please a persistent Senator and the fund-raising department of the Republican National Committee...
...It is an old and evil custom...
...Ambassadorships have also been used by Presidents as personal favors or to get rid of a pest...
...The Secretary commutes back and forth, from Congressional committees to world capitals to the White House, saying at each place what he thinks the jury wants to hear...
...The Ambassador to Ireland is Scott McLeod, an ex-FBI agent was was warring with Secretary Dulles for control of State Department personnel...
...Senator Alexander Smith (R.N.J...
...Fulbright: "Do you consider we are on friendly relations with India...
...I don't want to raise cain about it...
...The Senators' comments after Gluck left the chamber are also revealing...
...Whether we make friends or not, I do not care...
...Still in the prime of life and wanting to be remembered as something more than a ladies' dress salesman, he looked around for a Government post and contacted his friend, the energetic Senator Javits...
...He was what would be termed an "uncooperative witness...
...But privately they disclaim any responsibility...
...His contribution was $37,500...
...This is his old lawyer's policy of trying to win over the immediate jury he is addressing...
...Meanwhile, Under Secretary of State Christian Herler was trying to keep the Senate Foreign Relations Committee from holding open hearings on the appointment of Ambassadors—appointments which, in several recent cases, again show lawyer Dulles outwitting statesman Dulles...
...Perle Mesta, to Luxembourg to spread joy and teach square dancing...
...For the record, Kentucky's two able GOP Senators, John Sherman Cooper, ex-Ambassador to India, and Thruston Morton, former Assistant Secretary of State, sponsored Gluck...
...pointed out...
...Today, Dulles's words are being gleefully thrown around the world by the three imps of anti-American propaganda: Radios Moscow, Peking and Cairo...
...a perfect musical-comedy skit in itself, revealed Gluck's cheerful ignorance and lack of interest in the Far East and diplomacy, the State Department's cynical attitude toward our chief legates abroad, and Congress's frustration...
...The Gluck furor has achieved two worthwhile purposes...
...Senator Fulbright, a former university president and Rhodes Scholar, asked Gluck: "Why are you interested in Ceylon...
...Therefore, I move he be reported favorably...
...Fulbright said plaintively: "He is a nice man in his business, but I think wholly unsuited for this or any other post...
...Let the rulers who are imperialist lackeys, let the weaklings and humiliated rulers who, seduced by the dollar, have estranged their own peoples and tied their country to the wheel of American imperialists listen, loo...
...in both Democratic and Republican regimes...
...The Senator cased the town...
...Fulbright protested that Gluck was "unusually innocent of any knowledge of the area...
...Gluck: "Yes, but I can't pronounce his name...
...It has called attention to the haphazard method of picking Ambassadors...
...Gluck: "One of the problems are the people there, not necessarily a problem, but the relationship of the United States with the people in Ceylon...
...Gluck: "Well, I think they are both...
...He is known to the American public chiefly for his unusual interest in flying saucers...
...Fulbright: "Are they not friendly with us now...
...But he appeared five days after the public announcement of his new job...
...The Senator was Jacob Javits (R.-N.Y...
...He has a faculty of handling people...
...James is traditionally a banker with international connections, such as Andrew Mellon and Winthrop W. Aldrich, or a socialite well known in London, Paris and the Riviera, such as our current Ambassador, Jock Whitney...
...I think they are a people who are friendly and unfriendly, and I may be able to...
...Gluck: "His name is a bit unfamiliar now...
...Fulbright: "Do you know who the Prime Minister of Ceylon is...
...An Indiana Congressman asked him what he was trying to accomplish...
...Fulbright: "Who is it...
...Its people are unusually literate and sophisticated...
...He replied: "I am not particularly interested only in Ceylon, but I am interested in a Government post where I can do some work and do some good at it...
...It may be that a man going in there with a fresh outlook can help quite a bit...
...The questioning of Gluck...
...Gluck, seated in the small, antique chamber of the Senate committee, represented what we have come to regard as "the flower of the free enterprise system...
...Herter was cast in a strange (for him) role of a partisan and intolerant defender of the Administration...
...Gluck: : "Well, I think it is more —I think a lot depends on who is there, and what they do...
...He has created a big business and done well...
Vol. 40 • September 1957 • No. 35
