FOREIGN RELATIONS: Back to Madrid

As U.S. Ambassador to Italy in the touch & go postwar years, James Clement Dunn was credited with an important part in keeping Italy free from Communist control. Shifted to Paris in March 1952, he was somewhat overshadowed by the unprecedented cluster of U.S. envoys with ambassadorial rank who made their headquarters there.* Last week President Eisenhower named Dunn to a new post, for which he is well equipped: U.S. Ambassador to Spain.

For well-to-do, imperturbable Jimmy Dunn, the reassignment means a return to the place where he started his foreign-service career 33 years ago. After studying for a law degree and practicing briefly as an architect, he entered the Foreign Service as third secretary in Madrid. Married to Mary Armour of the meatpacking family, he combined social assurance and a sure sense of protocol with an unspectacular determination to become a competent career man. In 1927 Cal Coolidge borrowed him as White House director of ceremonies, and he stayed on under Herbert Hoover as chief of protocol.

In Franklin Roosevelt’s day, Dunn became a special assistant to, and croquet-playing friend of Secretary of State Hull. During the Spanish Civil War, as Hull’s respected political adviser in European affairs, he was a powerful influence in holding U.S. policy to an embargo on arms for both sides in Spain—to the chagrin of the U.S. left wing. Secretary of State Stettinius appointed him Assistant Secretary in 1944, and he was started on his ambassadorial round—to Italy—in 1946.

Other diplomatic appointments last week, including several long-rumored nominations (TIME, Feb. 16):

¶Karl L. Rankin, charge d’affaires on Formosa, to be Ambassador to the Nationalist Chinese government. In Taipeh, spokesmen for Chiang Kai-shek enthusiastically welcomed the elevation of popular Diplomat Rankin as another sign of a stronger U.S. policy in the Far East.

¶John M. Cabot, old Latin-American hand, to be Assistant Secretary of State in charge of Latin-American affairs.

¶David K. E. Bruce, 55, banker and diplomat, to be special U.S. observer with the Interim Committee of the European Defense Community. Baltimore-born, Princeton-trained Dave Bruce has mixed law practice (1921-26), banking and private business (1928-40) with Government service: he was a vice-consul in Rome in the ’20s, Assistant Secretary of Commerce in 1947-48, chief of the ECA in France in 1948-49, then became in turn Ambassador to France and Under Secretary of State in Washington.

¶Charles E. Bohlen, Russian-speaking State Department counselor, career diplomat, and veteran of embassy service in Moscow, to be Ambassador to the U.S.S.R.

¶Francis White, 60, Baltimore businessman (chemicals), to be Ambassador to Mexico. Yaleman White returns to the Foreign Service after a lapse of 20 years: he first entered the State Department in 1915, held posts in China, the Middle East, Latin America, Spain and Czechoslovakia, rose to Assistant Secretary of State in the Coolidge and Hoover Administrations. After leaving diplomacy in 1933, he became vice president, then president of the nonprofit Foreign Bondholders’ Protective Council Inc.

*The cluster: William H. Draper Jr., Special Representative in Europe and Permanent Representative to NATO and Draper’s two deputies. Major General Frederick L. Anderson and Diplomat Livingston T. Merchant.