Evening star., 1936-11-22

lines flanking the mouth are deep as
sword-slash scars.
Educated at Eton, Vansittart began
his career as an attache at the Paris
Embassy. He took steps up along the
routine diplomatic route; two years
In Persia, three in Egypt, back to the
London foreign Office for a spell, to
Stockholm in wartime ian important
diplomatic station then, owing to its
neutral situation), and to Paris for
the peace conference
British statesmen found him a use
full man to have around during the
peace negotiations, and when they
were over, Foreign Minister Lord
Curzon brought him home to be off,
cially his private secretary and un-
officially his Col. House Vansittart
was 40, a diplomat of 10 years stand
ing, and he had just married an
American wife. Mrs. Gladys Robinson
Duff. daughter Of Gen. William C..
Heppenheimer of the United States
Army.
Curzon, a grandee so exclusive that
ne never invited to dinner the Com
moner premiers, Lloyd George and
Baldwin, in whose cabinets he held
Office, enabled Vansittart to make a
sort of subsidiary reputation for him.
self through taking care of awkward
questions and hostile critics. There
were plenty of both while Curzon was
in charge Of foreign policy. The Dip
lomatic correspondents agreed that no.
body could give full reply to hostile
questioner better than Van. True.
when the questioner came to pore over
what he had got he found it did not
add up to much; but that Is by the
way.
Premiers began to notice him. stan
ley Baldwin made him his principal
private secretary. He doubled the jobs
of foreign office chief and premier's
right hand man.
Reason for Usefulness.
He was particularly useful at this
time because American relations-and
the war debt-were British premier's
chief preoccupations. Vansittart not
only had an American wife and.
through her, American contacts-but
he had been in charge of the Amer
lean department Of the foreign Office
for four years. Ramsay Macdonald
ousted Baldwin from the premiership,
but took over Vansittart, who was at
his side, and ear, in Washington in
1929.
Interesting to note is the suppleness
and adaptability, the political detach-
ment Of the man. He has worked
intimately with Tories and Socialists
and government officials Of all shades
of political thought.
They can't do without him. his tai
ents and accumulated knowledge The
day has gone when secret service work
meant mainly getting hold of details
of armaments, general staff plans,
mine-field charts. Today the govern
ment chiefs want to know about key
men in foreign states. Is this regime
as strong as it looks? Is that dictator
losing his grip-and If he goes. who
follows? What is the real power of
this expansionist group? What does
the war party plan and think? q
Such questions would defeat the
old-fashioned secret service chief.
They are routine matters for the
permanent head Of a foreign Office
being fed with routine and special
news from the diplomatic stations
and special agents all the time.
One incident illuminates this angle.
Premier Baldwin and Foreign Secre-
tary Hoare were In a jam last year
over the Ethiopian affair. British
public opinion, badly informed. ideal
istic, wanted no compromise with the
aggressor. The political chieftains
had to walk the tightrope between
domestic and external politics, mean
time trying to keep Mussolini from a
complete success in Ethiopia II they
could manage it without precipitating
a general war in Europe war which
might roll across Asia to the Pacific
and cost Britain thousands of millions
even If she were on the winning side
and her empire and everything If she
lost.
Hoare asked Vansittart what he
thought, and knew. The result was
the famous Hoare-Laval plan, which
they believed Mussolini would COM
promise on. British public opinion
blew the plan sky high. It was an
outrage against the League covenant.
Baldwin threw Hoare to the public
opinion lions. But Hoare was only
the gun. The man behind the gun
was Vansittart; and Vansittart stayed.
He always stays.
Mussolini, left to win or crash, won
his gamble, grabbed all Ethiopia and
edged nearer the German camp-as
vansittart had foreseen. If the plan
had gone through, Halle Selassie
might now occupy his throne by grace
of imperial Italy, as the King OF
Egypt occupies his throne by grace
of imperial Britain.
He has qualities, this remarkable
man, which are not entirely English.
Possibly for the clue to his mental
equipment, his fair, one must go back
to that forebear of his who was born
at Danzig in 165o-Peter van Sit
tard.
vansittart has paid ancestral hom-
CONTINUED On Ninth Psge)