The Waterbury Democrat., 1941-07-17

case is Bertel Eric kuniholm and he is and has been since April, 1940, the U. s. consul at Reykjavik, the Icelandic capital. Tn the U. &. Department of State directory Kuniholrn is rated as only a class six consular officer, which doesn't make him important when you con- sider that class one is tops and class nine is next to the bottom, which is unclassified.
 Anyway, Bertel Eric Kuniholm, just turned 40 last May 13, started out in life to be an Army offlcer. He was born at Lake Gardner, Mass, went to the Worcester Poly technic Institute, then Army Navy Prep School, from which he was graduated in 1919 to go right into the U. s Military Academy at West Point. Out of the academy as & second lieutenant in the class of 1924, he served for three years in the regular Army.
 In 1927 he drew, of all things, an assignment as instructor in military science at the Woodward School for Boys. He stood 1t for just a year and then, so the story in Washing ton goes, he decided that If this was all the excitement there was going to be for him in the Army, he was going to get out. The Army didn't rate very highly back in the 20's, you'll remember.
 BEGAN CAREER IN KOVNO
 So here old lady Fate stepped in- to the picture, tapped Kuniholm on the shoulder and persuaded him to chuck this decadent Army life. Maybe Fate knew then that she was leading him right to spot where he would be one of the first Americans to get into the thick of things at an outpost of hemisphere defense, 5000 miles from Lake Gardner, Mass, but certainly, 13 years ago, Second Lieutenant Ber- tel Eric Kuniholn didn't have the slightest idea he would end up in Iceland, perhaps setting the stage for war. Hemisphere defense, 13 years ago, hadn't even been thought of beyond the point that Herbert Hoover, who beat Al Smith for the presidency that year, immediately boarded a battleship and made 6 cruise around South America just as a friendly gesture to stimulate trade.
 Kuniholm, then aged 27, resigned from the Army, took off his u:n'- form and applied for an appoint ment in the U. s. consular service. Accepted, he went to Foreign Serv- ice School, then served @ year and a half as vice-consul at Kovno. Transferred to Paris, he was as- signed to the Ecole Rationale des Langues Orientales Vivantes, which means that he studied Russian. The Soviet, you'll recall, had every- body guessing in those days too, and experts were needed
 From 1883 to 1940 Kuniholm lived the life of a career diplomat work ing from the bottom up. He served a couple of short hitches in Wash- ington, and at Tallinn, Moscow, Riga, Zurich, then Reykjavik.
 Less than a month after he was appointed to Iceland, the British army moved in there and took over. He was keeping his date with grandmother Circumstance.
 GOOD MAN TO HAVE AROUND
 The U. s. State Department couldn't have had a better man for the job. Here he was, West Point trained, listening in at the very edge of the war, military observer in consul'S shoes. His reports to Washington are supposed to have made some of the most fascinating reading available, not only for the diplomats, but for the Army and Navy brass hats as well. And when the important negotiations had to be carried on with the Icelandic government and the British, Kuni- holm was on the ground.
 The Department of State had just sent him up some help in the person of H. Bartlett Wells, 33, of Plainfield, N. J., out of Phillips Exeter and Harvard, with foreign service in Managua, Mexico City and Montevideo And the prime minister of Iceland has requested that the U. S send up a diploma tic representative. Kuniholm, being only class six, naturally doesn't rate high enough to get the job. But he's had all the fun so far, anyway. And you never can tell about Fate.
 WASHINGTON BIRD SEED
 Price Fixer Leon Henderson's definition of reasonable profit, which 1t is assumed business will be allowed to earn even in war times, is "the amount necessary b keep the business going and invite new capital to participate in ex- pansion." .. By conservation, Great Britain is using less gasoline now, in the height of the war, than she did in the last peace-time year. June graduation exercises which you may not have heard of include the class of 57 officers who got diplomas from the Motor Transport School of the Holabird Quartermaster Depot in Maryland, and the i2 Air Corps officers who finished at glider school in Wright Field, Dayton. o. 4. Avia- ton Daily now reports the U. S.. has more planes that 1t has pilots, and personnel won't catch Up with plane production before october. Census data shows 3S major manufacturers produced In 1889 Q