PERSONNEL: Confidential Adviser

Only once did the name Alex Gumberg ever appear in a newspaper headline. That was last week when at 51 he died suddenly in Norwalk, Conn., stricken with coronary thrombosis while entertaining at his country home. Yet in one short life he had been a trusted adviser to Nikolai Lenin and the confidant of a Morgan partner.

To his non-religious funeral in a Westchester chapel went: former Governor Philip F. La Follette (who flew from Wisconsin to speak an informal funeral oration) ; Indiana’s onetime Governor James Putnam Goodrich; Madame Secretary of Labor Perkins; Mrs. Ogden Reid of the New York Herald Tribune; Writers Stuart Chase, John Gunther and Louis Adamic, Editor Freda Kirchwey of the Nation; Federal Judge Thomas D. Thacher, one time President of the New York City Bar Association; Banker John Hertz Sr. of Lehman Bros.; President Samuel Zemurray of United Fruit ; President Floyd Bostwick Odium of Atlas Corp., monster investment trust in which Alex Gumberg was a sort of minister without portfolio.

Although Atlas paid him $35,000 per year, Alex Gumberg had no title and his duties were vague. He handled public relations, sat in on negotiations, represented Atlas officially or unofficially in some cor porations that big Atlas controls. Did a financial reporter need some hard-to-get information? Alex Gumberg could and would get it for him. Did the Russian Ambassador want to justify Purges to the Press? Alex Gumberg arranged an off-the-record dinner—in the name of the Nation.

Born in Elizabethgrad in the Russian Ukraine, the son of a Jewish school teacher, Alex Gumberg migrated to the U. S. by himself at 15, became a licensed pharmacist. But he kept in touch with Bolshevik doings and returned to Russia after the Kerensky revolution. There he met, through William Boyce Thompson, Colonel Raymond Robin, head of the American Red Cross mission. In those troubled times Mr. Thompson could get no meat for his wolfhound. Gumberg got it., He became confidential agent for the Red Cross. Through the Red Cross he formed his enduring friendship with Judge Thacher and the late great Morgan Partner Dwight Morrow.

At the time he was advising Colonel Robin, who was also President Wilson’s unofficial representative to the Kremlin. Alex Gumberg was advising Lenin on policy toward the U. S. In the revolutionary confusion he also found himself acting as press censor, an unofficial job which evolved from the fact that he was hanging around the Kremlin and could speak English.

His curious ability to serve two masters with fidelity and impartiality persisted. At his parties he liked to mix Red with Tory indiscriminately and rib all sides unmercifully. He had a positive distaste for money. Once a friend deposited $1,000,000 to his account, told him to keep what he could make with it. Having a million worried Alex Gumberg so much that he finally gave it back. Of Alex Gumberg, Judge Thacher said last week:

“I have thought in the last day or so that if I was required to be tried by a judge who had a personal interest in the case in absolute conflict to my opinion, of all the men I know, whom would I select? I would select Alex Gumberg.”