THE CABINET: Morrow & Tomorrow

History. In July, a large consignment of luggage was accompanied out of Mexico City by its owner, U. S. Ambassador James Rockwell Sheffield. Mr. Sheffield was enjoying “magnificent” health, he said, and would always feel under obligations to President Coolidge,but he had resigned his post. Observers decided that the reason lay in a disagreement between Mr. Sheffield and the Department of State as to how firmly Mr. Sheffield should represent his country in Mexico.

A month passed. The President, summering in South Dakota, quietly revolved the Mexican vacancy with-in his mind. Late in August, the President’s Amherst College classmate, Dwight Whitney Morrow, stopped off in Rapid City on the way to his Idaho ranch. By that time the country’s ear was straining to catch added syllables about the President’s 1928 plans. To so close a friend as Mr. Morrow, to sopotent a representative of Big Business, it seemed the President must explain what “choose” meant. But Mr. Morrow pushed on to his ranch in bemused silence and observers could only conclude that the visit had been a purely friendly one.

How right was this conclusion became known last week when the President announced that Mr. Morrow had accepted the post of Ambassador to Mexico and that the appointment had been made without consulting the Department of State. In the Coolidge-Morrow conversation of July, friendship and personalconfidence had so far outrun politics that they had conferred upon a hitherto secondclass diplomatic appointment the significance of a major issue in U. S. statesmanship.

Morrow & Morgan. With the President’s friendship and confidence on one side, the lens that so magnified Mr. Morrow’s appointment had for its other surface Mr. Morrow’s partnership in J. P. Morgan & Co. Thirteen years ago Dwight W. Morrow was taken into the Morgan firm as a legal partner. In his absentminded, studious way, he soon became recognized as chief Morgan economist, a small, casually dressed little man with eyeglasses pinched above his triangular nose and a surprisingly forceful way of announcing himself.

The house of Morgan financed a great part of Mexico’s half billion-dollar external debt. Helping to see that Mexico keeps up its payments to the house of Morgan is not the least of the duties of a U. S. Ambassador to Mexico. That is the reason—though Mr. Morrow promptly announced his resignation from J. P. Morgan & Co.—that seven issues of Mexican bonds rose from1¼ to 3â…ž points on the U. S. market at news of the Morrow appointment and the reason why U. S. Senator Thaddeus H. Caraway, explosive Democrat from Arkansas, ejaculated: “President Coolidge has served notice on the Mexican Government that they will have to deal with J. Pierpont Morgan & Co. in the future!”

Comment by other politicians was similarly determined by the angle from which they looked through the magnifying lens. Cynical George Higgins Moses, Senator from New Hampshire, chose not to look through the lens at all and merely punned: “It is a capital appointment.”

Thin-lipped young Gerald P. Nye, Senator from North Dakota, aggressive Progressive, denounced the appointment as the boldest manifestation of Capitalism the Administration had yet shown and predicted that the Senate would be unwilling to confirm it. “No President,” he said, “who had any idea of running again, would have ventured to make such an appointment.”

Senator James A. Reed, Missouri’s dynamic Democrat, let fly: “. . . another move of Morgan & Co. to get its financial hooks into Mexico!”

The New York Times, outstanding U. S. Democrat, countered solidly for the President, saying: “Mr. Coolidge must fully have anticipated the charges that will be made against him in connection with the Morrow appointment, but decided to despise them.”

Senator Duncan Upshaw Fletcher of Florida, another Democrat, said: “Mr. Morrow, I am sure, has the ability and qualifications required for the position. If he has decided to relinquish private business and devote himself to public interests, he can serve his country and Mexico with happy results in promoting good will, co-operation and eco-nomic conditions to the advantage of all concerned.”

Senator Fletcher’s view coincided precisely with that of Senator William Edgar Borah, Republican chairman of the Senate Committee on Foreign Relations, whose prime concern was that the present Government policy of peaceful adjustment in Mexico should be continued.

In Mexico, the Calles government having approved Mr. Morrow, Business was pleased. Labor was suspicious. But neithercommitted what one politely dubious editorial called “the discourtesy and injustice of placing in doubt the qualities which distinguished Mr. Morrow.”

Morrow & Mañana. Political protests died away. There was nothing the anti-Morrow Senators could do until the Senate should meet in December. Meantime Mr. Morrow would go to Mexico so soon as Secretary of State Frank Billings Kellogg reached Washington to complete a commissioning in which he actually had no part. Such instructions as Mr. Morrow received were direct from his friend Calvin Coolidge.

And how would President Coolidge ask Mr. Morrow to behave in the Land of Mañana? Here was the focus of attention for people who know Mr. Morrow as well as the President does. Like the President, they could align Mr. Morrow’s undoubted, ability and his Morgan connection as natural complements. They could see the U. S. well served by an understanding of Mexican conditions that has been found serviceable by J. P. Morgan & Co. They could remember the thoroughness and despatch with which Mr. Morrow, at President Coolidge’s request, investigated the Air Service rumpus kicked up by Col. William A. Mitchell, U. S. A., in 1925; how, as chairman of the President’s Aircraft Board, Mr. Morrow mapped out the Government air program now going forward.

But the question was: How will intense, unconventional, efficient and sometimes impatient Mr. Morrow of New York City get along with easygoing, inefficient, procrastinating Mr. Tomorrow of Mexico City? Will Mr. Morrow restrain his inclination to hurry Mr. Tomorrow on such a matter as defining and settling U. S. oil land titles in Mexico? Will the Mexicans be offended if he interrupts their siestas with statistics? Or are modern Mexicans susceptible to amiable prompting? Is the almost whimsical Morrow importunity an ideal substitute for angry notes and troops along the border?

Many persons acclaimed the sending of Mr. Morrow to live with Mr. Tomorrow as a stroke of extrapolitical good fortune and wisdom. One close student of U. S. govern-ment ventured to speculate on the possible future effects of the stroke.

Prediction. Wrote able Correspondent Clinton W. Gilbert of the New York Evening Post: “One of the possibilities … is Mr. Morrow’s promotion to the Secretaryship of State if Secretary Kellogg should retire before the end of President Coolidge’s term in office. But in any case Mr. Morrow’s appointment opens the way to a public career for him, either in the Cabinet or in higher European diplomatic posts, under this or subsequent Republican administrations.”