FOREIGN RELATIONS: The Manager Abroad

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On the dingy brick wall of No. 9 Grosvenor Square, where London workmen are still repairing blitz damage, there is an inconspicuous blackened plaque: “In this house lived John Adams, first American Minister to Great Britain, May 1785-March 1788, afterwards second President of the United States.”

A few yards away, at No. 6, another plaque marks, the bomb-battered, 4½-story mansion where Ambassador Walter Hines Page worked himself to death trying to get the U.S. into World War I. At No. I Grosvenor Square, housed in a massive, brick-faced concrete & steel structure, are the headquarters of Lewis Williams Douglas, 46th U.S. envoy* to the Court of St. James’s.

The three numbers symbolize a great and striking change in world diplomacy. At No. 9, John Adams was a scarcely tolerated rebel whose main job was to keep the U.S. out of Europe’s troubles. At No. 6, even though he was a dogged Anglophile, Walter Page was but a second-level member of London’s diplomatic corps in an age when most Americans still thought of international diplomacy with all the repugnance of a Victorian lady contemplating sex.

But last week, as Lew Douglas flew back to No. I Grosvenor Square from consultations in Washington, he was the most important diplomat of the most powerful nation in the world. In his fat calfskin briefcase he carried the skeleton of the most ambitious economic foreign policy in history: the reconstruction of Western Europe. In 1947, U.S. diplomacy was big business, as big as the enormous wealth and prestige of the richest and most powerful nation on earth.

Dowagers & Movie Stars. The change was not immediately apparent, especially last week, the week of Princess Elizabeth’s wedding. Like every U.S. envoy, Lew Douglas had traditional diplomatic rites to perform. He went to a reception at Buckingham Palace, to a dinner with the dowager Marchioness of Reading, and to a St. James’s Palace reception to see Princess Elizabeth’s wedding gifts.

One morning he had a sadder duty. Sitting in St. Paul’s Cathedral, Lew Douglas heard the memorial service for the late Ambassador John Gilbert Winant, to thousands of wartime Britons, the shy, gaunt symbol of U.S. help, a man Britain will not forget.

When Secretary of State George Marshall flew in for the opening of this week’s Foreign Ministers’ Conference, the big business of Big Diplomacy began. In between a cocktail party for visiting movie stars and an honorary degree for Marshall, Douglas and Marshall got to work.

Their talks ranged over the whole set of problems which beset the U.S. in its efforts to organize the world for peace and fight the cold war against Russia. Within the larger framework of the Marshall Plan and the future of Germany, they touched on the two facts which particularly concerned Douglas in Britain: British dollars and British coal. Marshall was the policymaker in Washington; Lew Douglas was his most articulate interpreter abroad, and a trusted adviser besides.

Potatoes & Knee Breeches. It was a far cry from the days when Charlie Dawes worried about whether or not to wear knee breeches to court (he decided not to), or when Boston’s bookish Ambassador Alanson Bigelow Houghton singled out as his principal concern the export status of the American potato. As he labored over his problems last week, no one knew better than Lew Douglas how the scope of U.S. diplomacy had changed.

Even its technical workings had been altered unrecognizably since the day when Thomas Jefferson seriously questioned the need for any U.S. envoy in London at all. On the State Department rolls last week were 20,903 employees, from Secretary Marshall to a Chinese translator in Nanking. State’s budget was a whopping $303 million. The London Embassy was staffed by over 500. U.S. diplomacy was a big business machine and it took skilled managers to run it—men like ex-Banker James Bruce in Buenos Aires, ex-Businessman William Pawley in Rio, ex-jack-of-all-careers Lew Douglas in London.

Lewis Douglas is one of the most typical products of the managerial revolution. In his adult life he has managed: 1) the U.S. budget, 2) a large industrial concern (American Cyanamid), 3) a university (Montreal’s McGill University), 4) a huge insurance company (Mutual Life of New York), and 5) an important arm of a wartime government (Deputy War Shipping Administrator). He is a practical economist rather than a theoretician, he has more than an amateur’s interest in history, but is no intellectual. He likes to keep things moving, his desk clean, his thoughts clear. He is not afraid to make a decision, or to state his convictions. He can delegate power. He is no real expert on any one thing, but he knows something about a lot of things, especially what makes capitalism work.

In Washington, World Bank President John J. McCloy, who is also Douglas’ brother-in-law, commented: “I’ve known Lew too long to go into ecstasies over him, but then I don’t know who I’d go into ecstasies over. He’s no giant, no genius. He’s a sound, solid citizen with a good education and a good start in life who has been bounced to the top in our competitive system. He’s no smarter than a lot of other people who haven’t leveled out yet. I think that’s the way Lew would think of himself.”

The Professor & Rawhide Jim. Lew Douglas got his start in life in the vast, rolling desert country of Arizona, the descendant of men who had already made history in the West. Grandfather James Douglas, a Canadian, had studied in Edinburgh for the ministry, returned to Quebec to study medicine, and wound up in the copper mines along the Mexican border. Backed by Phelps-Dodge money from the East, he struck it rich with the Copper Queen Mine. He went on to help develop the town of Bisbee, a mine at Morenci, others at Globe and across the Mexican border in Nacozari. He wound up as president of Phelps-Dodge and a legend in the West, a strange, warm, brilliant man, always known as “the professor” to admiring mining toughs.

From his grandfather Lew inherited charm; from his father he inherited the restless drive that has kept him chugging like a jackhammer for 53 years. Lew was born in the little Arizona town of Bisbee, soon moved to Douglas, which his father had named in “the professor’s” honor. When Lew was six, the family pushed on again to the Nacozari mine in Mexico, where his father got the nickname of “Rawhide Jim” because of his practice of repairing mine machinery with rawhide. As superintendent of the mine, Rawhide Jim cut wages, drove his men hard, and contemptuously ignored threats of death, kidnaping and dynamiting.

Lew grew up in the big house on the hill at Nacozari, playing baseball with the Mexican kids, learning to ride and rope. Rawhide Jim was a stern father who trained Lew to independence and hard work. Once, to discipline him, his father sent him over to a wrecked schoolhouse and ordered him to “take every last nail out of every last board.”

The Hard Way. At eleven, Lew went east to the Hackley School in Tarrytown, N.Y. While his father made a strike at the U.V.X. mines in central Arizona, Lew was studying history and playing baseball at Amherst, trying to make up his mind what to do next. After one postgraduate year studying metallurgy at M.I.T., World War I decided for him.

Lew came back from France a 1st lieutenant, with a citation from Pershing, a Belgian Croix de Guerre, and suffering from the aftereffects of a gassing in the Argonne. He tried teaching, first at Amherst, then at Hackley, where he could be closer to Peggy Zinsser (niece of famed Scientist Hans Zinsser), whom he had met at a Smith-Amherst dance. But teaching was not quite Lew’s line. After he and Peggy were married, they moved back to Arizona.

Rawhide Jim put Lew to work as a mucker in the mines at Jerome, where he started learning copper the hard way. It was a rough life. Rawhide Jim was still the stern, domineering, iron-willed parent. (He had gone to France for the Red Cross during the war, became such an ardent Francophile that when he came home, he carried his own sack of French croissants whenever he went into a restaurant.) He kept a tight rein on Lew. Peggy hated the life. When a Prescott newsman suggested that Lew run for the state legislature, both Lew and Peggy jumped at the chance.

White House Favorite. They piled into an old Ford, stumped the district together. Lew won handily. In 1926, when Arizona’s lone Representative Carl Hayden resigned to run for the Senate, Lew made a bid for higher office.

He was a wet in a dry state, but he won the election by two to one. In Congress, he plumped for an import tax on copper, fought against Boulder Dam because he thought it discriminated against Arizona water interests. He won his reputation as a determined foe of Government spending. A nominal Democrat, he often hurdled party lines to vote with the G.O.P., tangled violently with tough old Speaker Jack Garner.

Arizona voters sent him back twice and elected him for a fourth term. A lean, wiry youngster in his 30s, he was a familiar figure on the Hill, bicycling to work from his Georgetown home, pitching for the Democrats in the annual House baseball game.

When Franklin Roosevelt began looking for a Director of the Budget after the 1932 elections, Lew Douglas was a natural choice. He became a White House favorite. Said Eleanor Roosevelt at the Douglas, Ariz. airport dedication in 1933: “That name of Douglas is familiar to me. I see a man by that name having breakfast with my husband almost every day.”

Douglas took the Roosevelt economy pledge at its face value and set to work paring the budget 25%. He slashed Government workers’ pay 15%, sliced $400 million out of veterans’ appropriations. When someone once protested that the District of Columbia Commissioners would be “very shocked” by a 25% appropriations cut, Lew replied: “These are shocking times.”

“Marching Men.” Lew lasted as Budget Director for just 18 months. When New Deal public works and pump-priming began, Lew Douglas knew he was licked. He went up to Hyde Park to protest. Replied Roosevelt: “But if we don’t continue there will be revolutions and marching men.” Lew disagreed. That day he handed in his resignation.

Disillusioned, he took over as vice president and board member of American Cyanamid and devoted himself to blasting the New Deal. He wrote a book, The Liberal Tradition, attacking New Deal reforms as “roads leading away from free enterprise.” In 1936 he said: “I will go to the polls to express my opposition to the New Deal by voting for Mr. Landon.”

In 1937 came the offer from McGill University. Douglas accepted. He found his grandfather still remembered at McGill, where Douglas Hall was named after him. Now Lew is remembered, too, as a man who balanced the university budget by such stringent economies as yanking out phones and urging his aides to scribble memos on the back of old envelopes.

“Come to See Me.” The war, and a job as president of Mutual Life, brought him back to the U.S. and to Government work. Franklin Roosevelt had never forgiven him for his political switch (Douglas also supported Willkie in 1940). Lew’s mind, said Roosevelt, runs “more to dollars than humanity.” But when Harry Hopkins urged Roosevelt to overlook past political differences, Roosevelt relented: “Have him come to see me.”

As deputy Lend-Lease expediter, Douglas hustled off to London, in a few weeks discovered where the bottleneck was. For lack of shipping, war material was piling up at ports and warehouses in the U.S. Douglas came back to Washington as economic adviser to the War Shipping Administration, later as deputy. He worked out a system of cargo allocations and ship routings that soon cracked the bottleneck. In 1944, with the plaudits of shipping men and the “warm regards” of Franklin Roosevelt, Douglas decided the job was done.

He was in Arizona in the spring of 1947, nursing a troublesome sinus on his 20,000-acre ranch near Sonoita, when the call came from George Marshall. Douglas’ name had been proposed for the ambassadorship to Great Britain after the death of Ambassador-designate O. Max Gardner. But the Democratic hatchetmen were against him. Harry Truman told George Marshall that the political ramifications of his appointment would be serious. Replied George Marshall: “The political ramifications will be a lot more serious if this Administration appoints an inferior man as Ambassador to Britain at this time.” Marshall won his point.

The Marshall-Douglas conversation was brief. “Douglas, I’m calling to ask you if you’ll accept the ambassadorship to Britain.” “You take my breath away. I’ll have to think about it.” “What is your immediate reaction, Douglas?” “My immediate response is favorable. I’d like four days to think about it.” On the fourth day Lew accepted.

“Good Risk.” Douglas quickly won the confidence of thousands of weary, sensitive British citizens with his pre-sailing judgment: “Britain is a good risk.” He bolstered his popularity when he got to London and said: “Mrs. Douglas and I propose to live as simply as possible.”

From the first, Lew Douglas got along with everyone, from Communist Arthur Horner to Imperialist Winston Churchill, from the King & Queen to a 66-year-old miner’s wife, who bussed him after his visit to a Yorkshire coal mine. At parties and receptions at Prince’s Gate, he had the happy faculty of greeting each guest as though the affair had been a complete flop until the latest arrival. British Laborites were frankly delighted to have a man who was in tune with Washington economic thinking and could speak with authority for the official U.S.

But he did more than just get along. He kept plugging for better management of the British mines. He helped revise the convertibility provisions of the British loan. He had already helped lay down the occupation policy for Germany as a special adviser to General Lucius Clay in 1945. As much as any man, he did the spadework for the new U.S. policy in Germany (by talking France into raising the level of industry; by recommending increased U.S. supervision in the Ruhr in return for more U.S. dollars).

He rode close herd on the Marshall Plan from the start. After the 16-nation conferees began their meetings in Paris last July, Lew Douglas was more often in France than in London, digging for facts, explaining Europe’s needs to visiting Congressmen, always staying tactfully in the background at a time when the U.S. was officially not intervening. When the conferees had finished, he came back to the U.S. with Will Clayton to help screen Europe’s requests and draft legislation for interim and long-range aid. He wrote some of the technical and financial clauses himself, flew to Washington again this month to help sell the final product to Congress.

Secret of Success. In England these days he has little time for the fishing he loves. The two bicycles given him by admirers are locked up in the cellar at Prince’s Gate. He sees an occasional movie, sometimes gets in a walk in Hyde Park or a weekend in the country. After this week he will miss his rare, free evenings at home with Mrs. Douglas and daughter Sharman (a crashing belle of London society). They flew back to the U.S. for Christmas in New York with son Peter, down from Yale, and New Year’s in Arizona with son James, a Tucson bank clerk.

Not the least of his personal troubles is financial. Contrary to tradition, and to legend, Douglas is not a rich man. His grandfather’s fortune has already been dispersed; his father’s is locked up in Canada, where Rawhide Jim retired in an anti-New Deal huff in 1939. With only $53,570 a year in pay and allowances to run the London Embassy, Lew is forced to dig deep into his own savings.

But Lew Douglas’ spirits are up. Though his Arizona tan is gone and he is beginning to look a little drawn, his sinus trouble has not bothered him in London’s unusually dry, bright weather. His stomach (he once had “most of the insides cut out” as a result of the Argonne gassing) is well enough so that he can sneak an occasional forbidden Martini or cigarette.

He wears the air of a man who has at last found his right job, who is doing just what he was made for and has been looking for all his life. He likes the feel and atmosphere of public success which he has had in London, and shows it in an assured, confident manner.

TIME’S London bureau cabled last week: “The secret of Douglas’ success in dealing with Britons is that he remains thoroughly American, yet manages to be the complete antithesis of the grotesque caricature so many Britons have built up of the typical American: loudmouthed, loud-suited and inclined to give a condescending slap on the aching British back.

“He understands and seriously sympathizes with the British hypersensitivity in the face of the westward migration of power. He recognizes that one of his main tasks is to help preserve British dignity and authority to the limits set by the new realities of world power. He knows that the recovery of Germany and the stability of France are both important, but that if the British position continues to deteriorate, stability in Europe and the world as a whole seems impossible.”

*Douglas is the 17th U.S. Ambassador to Great Britain, the 46th Chief of Mission. Not until 1893 did the U.S. raise ministers to ambassadorial rank.