Foreign News: Practice Ceases

King George and Queen Elizabeth, who promptly took likable, new U. S. Ambassador Joseph P. Kennedy & family into the Buckingham Palace family circle, had these new American friends down to Windsor Castle for the week end. Also present were Prime Minister & Mrs. Chamberlain. London has taken to the Kennedy children almost as enthusiastically as though they were the King’s own moppets, and the Sunday Observer has recently come out with the results of a competition in which Britons have been writing verses on the U. S. Ambassador’s recent hole-in-one at Stoke Poges.

First prize the Observer divided between these two:

The fact is that a Diplomat who holes his ball in one

Is like his shot, and will not be often done.

H. C. M.

He saw it steadily and saw it hole.

Good omen of a longer, rougher role. Mrs. L. C. Jacks.

A hearty epithet frequently on the lips of the late King George V in private— although always eschewed by the English in public—was “bloody,” and this Ambassador Kennedy has now adopted at London into his pungent speech. Last week, just before going down with Mrs. Kennedy to Windsor Castle, the Ambassador called in correspondents, exploded vehemently against the presentation at Court of socialite U. S. women. Cried he: “I believe this policy is undemocratic and un-American!”

Democrat Kennedy then gave out a letter in which he had turned down an unnamed U. S. woman’s application forwarded by Republican Senator Henry Cabot Lodge Jr. “For many years this Embassy has had the privilege of presenting between 20 and 30 American ladies each year, and the Court is still disposed to receive as many American ladies as in the past,” wrote Ambassador Kennedy. “The number of American ladies presented, however, has on the average been twice as great as the number of ladies presented by all other diplomatic missions put together. . . . I cannot see that it serves any useful purpose for either one of the two countries and, in my view, the practice should cease.” Therefore the Embassy will present from now on only “the families of American officials in this country” and “members of the immediate families of those Americans who are not merely visiting England but are domiciled here.”

The Ambassador’s letter was addressed to “Dear Cabot” and Senator Lodge replied, “Dear Joe. . . . As I said when we talked this over before you sailed, I think this is a good decision. . . . With high regard and warm personal greetings. . . . (signed) Cabot L.”

The British angle on all this was that Sir Sidney Clive, the astute Marshal of the Diplomatic Corps, had in masterly fashion secured both high U. S. Democratic and high U. S. Republican sponsorship for cutting out some 25 U. S. presentations. Sir Sidney is cutting out enormously greater numbers of presentations of British women, but that he can do without risk—whereas His Majesty’s Government have been most wary of antagonizing any potent U. S. tycoons, wives & daughters.