The Waterbury Democrat., 1931-09-25
NEA Service Writer

Washington.-Secre of State Harry L. Stimson, who thinks sec- i retaries should go abroad and ham, dle their most important diplomacy personally instead of through am- | bassadors, is expected to do more ! negotiating on foreign soil than all his predecessors did over a period of about 130 years.
 Stimson probably will head the American delegation to the Geneva disarmament conference in Febru- ary. His experience at the London
 naval conference and the Paris moratorium conference, combined with his recent two-month trip
 during which he conferred with European statesmen about the forthcoming Geneva gathering, causes him to be regarded as the most effective among men who
 might be assigned to the job. Appearance of an American sec-
 retary of state at three such mo-
 mentous conferences will appear to
 be another hard blow at the rather
 shopworm theory of isolation in our
 international relations and defi-
 nitely mark the beginning of a new system of diplomacy. Five other secretaries have visited foreign na- tions, but usually only to make a
 bow, sign a document or perform some gracious gesture. The new
 policy of personal contracts be-
 tween world statesmen, which
 Stimson has adopted with the ap-
 proval of President Hoover, is
 based on the same line of thought
 as led to the visit of Hoover to
 South America in 1928 as presi-
 dent-elect and Premier Ramsay
 MacDonald's visit to Washington in 1929.
 Stimson says a man in his posi- tion needs personal, intimate
 knowledge of foreign ministers and premiers to aid him in dealing with
 them and that such knowledge can facilitate quick, intelligent deci-
 sions. Communications through ambassadors are lsually quite for
 mai and not as dependable, when it comes to interpretation or com plete understanding, as informal exchanges between two principals. The Geneva naval conference of 1927 blew up for lack of adequate
 preliminary negotiations. teaching the state department a lesson. Mac Donald's conversations with Hoover here in advance of the London con- ference and Stimson's recent talks with the highest officials at Rome, Paris, London and Berlin were de- sgined to smooth the way so as to avoid any more such complete failures.
 Stimson was pleased by the inti- mate contacts he made. He went motorboat-speeding with Mussolini,
 found that German Chancellor Bruening had been a machine gunner in the same war sector in 1918, gave a sailboat to the grand daughter of Foreign Minister Cur titus for which he received a letter
 of thanks addressed Dear Uncle Stimson" and fooled around pigsties
 and sheep pens in Scotland with Macdonald.
 When the secretary goes abroad he is also in the position of the
 head of a firm inspecting his
 branch offices. Heart to hear talfis with American ambassadors and
 consuls are regarded as sometimes
 more valuable than the reading of typewriter reports.
 It is likewise possible for Stim-
 son, in his globe-trotting, to talk
 with financiers and other important
 non-ofticial personages with whom
 he would never come in contact if
 he stayed at home.
 The department records appear
 to show that the first secretary of
 state to go abroad was Elihu Root,
 who in 1908 visited various coun-
 tries of South America and made