Foreign News: Ambassador Ronald

Gilbert, Robert or Oswald—Oswald, Robert or Gilbert? For months political observers have played a counting-out game with these names trying to guess who was to succeed Sir Esme Howard as British Ambassador to Washington. Last week came abrupt word from London that neither Oswald, Robert or Gilbert, but Ronald is It. Sir Oswald Mosley, famed Socialist baronet, remained Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster. Sir Robert Vansittart, secretary to Prime Minister MacDonald and favorite of the counters-out, was appointed Head of the Foreign Office as Permanent Under Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs. Professor Gilbert Murray, violent League of Nations partisan, went on teaching Greek at Oxford. The new Ambassador-designate, who will go to Washington early next year, is Sir Ronald Lindsay. 52, brawny six-foot Scot, onetime Ambassador to Germany and to Turkey. No stranger to the U. S. is Ambassador Ronald. A career diplomat, holder until last week of the post to which Sir Robert Vansittart has been appointed, he has served at the Washington Embassy twice: from 1905 to 1907, as Second Secretary under Sir Henry M. Durand; from 1919 to 1920 as Councilor of the Embassy under Viscount Grey of Fallodon and Sir Auckland Geddes. A more personal tie to the U. S. is the fact that Ambassador Ronald has married two daughters of U. S. citizens. His first wife was Martha Cameron, daughter of onetime Senator J. Donald Cameron of Pennsylvania. The present Lady Lindsay was Elizabeth Sherman Hoyt, daughter of the late famed stockbroking Colgate Hoyt of Manhattan, and grandniece of General William Tecumseh (“Scourge of Georgia”) Sherman.

Fifth son of the late Earl of Crawford, tall Sir Ronald is high in chivalry, can match order for order with the present British Ambassador at Washington, courtly Sir Esme Howard. Both are Knights Commander of the Bath, both are Knights Grand Cross of St. Michael and St. George, both have an imposing row of subsidiary ribbons to blazon their lapels. Of interest to Washington diners-out is the fact that unlike Sir Esme Howard, Sir Ronald Lindsay is not a teetotaler, will almost certainly abolish the rule against the importation of embassy liquor.

U. S. newspapers commented last week:

The New York Times (Democratic): “We should have warmly greeted some Englishman distinguished in literature or science or social work who could have moved freely among us to give and take the best of either nation. This was not to be, and in the selection of Sir Ronald Lindsay a plain hint is given that the British Government expects to do a great deal of important business with our own.”

The New York Herald Tribune (Republican) : “For several years he has been regarded as one of the most brilliant and successful of British diplomatists, so that his appointment to Washington is also in the nature of a compliment.”