THE NATION: Help, Hope & Shelter

The funeral of John Foster Dulles was a hero’s tribute, the first in the nation’s history to be designated by the President as an “official” funeral. Gathered at Arlington National Cemetery was the greatest assemblage of foreign statesmen and diplomats ever to attend the burial of a U.S. citizen.

The Warrior. Germany’s oaken Chancellor Konrad Adenauer had come “to accompany my old friend on his final journey.” Australia’s Prime Minister Robert G. Menzies was there, and Madame Chiang Kaishek, U.N.’s Dag Hammarskjold, NATO’s Secretary-General Paul Henri Spaak, 14 foreign ministers, envoys from all of Washington’s 83 foreign missions. From Tokyo, Japan’s Foreign Minister Aiichiro Fujiyama had made a hurried flight halfway around the world to pay his last respects to the architect of the Japanese peace treaty. From Geneva, the Big Four foreign ministers—Christian Herter, Selwyn Lloyd, Maurice Couve de Murville, Andrei Gromyko—had flown to Washington, interrupting their conference on Berlin.

The gathering of the statesmen was movingly symbolic of what John Foster Dulles had become in the eyes of the world: not only the Secretary of State of the world’s greatest power, but a champion and spokesman of the entire free world in its struggle with Communism, and a warrior for peace and freedom.

Across the River. The funeral rites began at 2 p.m. in Washington’s monumental National Cathedral, the capital’s largest church. The hush of mourning, deepest of all silences, was broken when a boys’ choir marched in from the north wing, singing.

Oh God, our help in ages past, Our hope for years to come, Our shelter from the stormy blast, And our eternal home.

The service was simple, austerely Presbyterian. At Mrs. Janet Dulles’ request, eulogies were omitted. At 2:42 the military honor guard standing outside the church snapped to attention and saluted, as servicemen in dress uniform carried the coffin to the hearse.

A line of 200 cars followed the hearse along crowd-lined avenues, past embassies with flags flying at half-staff. Crossing the Potomac into Virginia, the procession stopped at the cemetery gate, where an iron-tired Army caisson with six grey horses waited to carry to the grave the body of the statesman, sometime (1917-18) major, U.S. Army. With an Army-Navy-Air Force color-guard marching ahead, and the flag of the U.S. Secretary of State flying bravely behind, the caisson rolled slowly up the hill to the grave site on a grassy knoll near a yellowwood tree.

Saluting Fire. Under a canopy near the grave, the mourners silently took their places. In the first row beside the family—Mrs. Dulles, two grown sons, a married daughter—sat the President of the U.S., his face set in sadness, and next to him his wife. As the Army band played Hark, Hark, My Soul, servicemen from the Army, Navy, Air Force, Marine Corps and Coast Guard lifted the coffin from the caisson and carried it to the grave. The Rev. Roswell P. Barnes, U.S. secretary of the World Council of Churches, read the burial service: “I am the resurrection and the life . . . Earth to earth, ashes to ashes, dust to dust …” Nineteen times, saluting cannon fire boomed and echoed. Then three sharp rifle volleys sounded, and the last, sad farewell of Taps.

A few minutes later, the mourners moved back toward their cars. Alone at the head of the grave, a cemetery workman stuck into the fresh earth a metal marker reading simply:

“Lot No. 31, John Foster Dulles, May 27, 1959-“