National Affairs: Moore Mystery

Of all recent U. S. diplomatists, none is more conspicuous than Alexander Pollock Moore, the large, hearty, worldly Pittsburgher whom President Harding picked for Ambassador to Spain. When he went to Madrid, Mr. Moore’s fame rested on two things—the Pittsburgh Leader, which he had published, and the late Lillian Russell, whose widower he was. Spain’s sporting royalty found him a “typical American,” loquacious, gustatory, with a head as hard as it was large. Not a few good “tips” did King Alfonso get on U. S. stocks. In return Mr. Moore acquired, by the time he resigned in 1925, some of that polish which only intimate, cosmopolitan “contacts” can give.

Nevertheless, people were puzzled last week when the State Department said it had queried the Peruvian Government to see if Mr. Moore would be an acceptable successor to Miles Poindexter of Spokane, erstwhile Senatorial lameduck, who soon vacates his Ministry at Lima. President Coolidge is most sensitive to criticism of his appointments and people who have not seen Mr. Moore lately still think of him as a Pittsburgher of the burghiest. Why should President Coolidge choose Mr. Moore? ‘Why, moreover, should Mr. Moore want to go to Peru?

Pennsylvania’s lone Senator, haggard David A. Reed of Pittsburgh, helped answer the first question by admitting that Mr. Moore had asked him to use his influence with President Coolidge. It also became known that William Randolph Hearst was planning to sell three of his gumchewer sheetlets—the Mirror (New York), Advertiser (Boston) and American (Baltimore)—to Mr. Moore. Perhaps Mr. Hearst helped persuade President Coolidge to please his customer. If Publisher Hearst has such influence with President Coolidge, it may well mean that the latter’s disinclination to another nomination is decreasingly adamant.

But still, why should Mr. Moore want to go to Peru? Peru is far away. Lima society is exciting, but very limited. After Madrid, Mr. Moore would find it paltry if not provincial. And aside from the absurd Tacna-Arica dispute, in which the U. S. is a laughed-at arbiter, no momentous Peruvian problem awaits solution by a stalwart U. S. patriot. True, there is talk that U. S. bankers are planning handsome developments, which is to say exploitations, in Peru. But Mr. Moore, with all the money a man could decently desire, is far above being a dollar diplomatist. All he might gain is greater familiarity with financial bigwigs, and that he could compass by far handier means; as a home-loving tabloid publisher, for example.

People were mystified. Why Moore? Why Peru?