Death of Herrick

General John Joseph Pershing, changed by Time and the War from hardboiled brigadier to dapper boulevardier, stepped with his crisp cock-robin stride from the Place de la Concorde into the ornate lobby of the Hotel Crillon. An excited reporter from the Paris Herald rushed at him.

"General Pershing, have you heard about the death?"

"Death of whom, young man?"

"Herrick. Ambassador Herrick!"

"Herrick!" The shoulders of the 68-year-old General slumped. He walked slowly into the writing room, sank into a chair.

"The third now--Foch, Bishop Brent, Herrick. We grow old. A great man. I knew him as Governor of Ohio years ago. A great Ambassador."

The General rose. A braided doorman solicitously took his elbow. "Blackjack" Pershing seemed about to faint. The commander of the A. E. F. brusquely brushed the doorman aside and stalked to the elevator, cock-robin once more.

Everywhere in Paris people mourned le brave Herrick. The ambassador, 74, had insisted five days before on taking full part in the funeral of his friend Marshal Foch (TIME, April i). He stood bareheaded in the cold mist at the Arc de Triomphe and walked in the cortege all the way from Notre Dame to Les Invalides. Two days later he complained of a cold. He went to bed. The next day heart specialists were called in. Parmely Herrick, the Ambassador's son, was called by trans-Atlantic telephone at his home near Cleveland. Just before dusk on Easter Sunday the Ambassador smiled suddenly, and died.

The distinguished, curly-haired Myron Timothy Herrick started life on a farm in Huntington, Ohio. His first real job was peddling lightning rods, parlor organs and dinner bells to farmer-neighbors. In 1903 he was elected Governor of the state; his Lieutenant-Governor was convivial Warren Gamaliel Harding. Ap- pointed Ambassador to France by President Taft, some trick of fate made the tall, handsome Ohioan look more Parisian than most boulevard flaneurs. The French took him to their hearts. Never a retiring violet, his theatrical sense of diplomacy made him a hero on three occasions.

The first, in 1914, was when he refused to follow the French government fleeing to Bordeaux before the German advance. Cannily he declaimed: "The American flag will stay over the American embassy and I will stay with it. There are times when a dead ambassador is of more value than a live one."

His second diplomatic coup was in 1926. With the franc falling to 3 cents, and no bottom in sight, anti-American sentiment reached a peak. Mr. Herrick took several hundred thousand dollars voted by Congress to purchase a new Embassy and bought francs, all the francs he could, "to show America's belief in the stability of France."

His greatest achievement was Charles Augustus Lindbergh. In 1927 that sensitive plant, Franco-American relations, was in a precarious state due to the un- fortunate flight of the French flyers Nungesser and Coli. Shy, Nordic Lindbergh was just what the clever diplomat needed. He rushed to Le Bourget waving French and U. S. flags; seized on "Lucky Lindy" with avidity; put him to bed in his own diplomatic pajamas; wrapped him in the tricolor; had him photographed, interviewed, dined and decorated; and caused the greatest enthusiasm for things U. S. since French transports of joy hailed the first U. S. transports of war.

Washington must look hard and long to find as capable a man to replace him.

Arrangements were quickly made for a state funeral with full military honors in the American procathedral. White-chinned Prime Minister Poincare was expected to deliver the funeral oration, and the newest French cruiser, La Tourville was ordered in readiness to carry the body back to the U. S.

Meanwhile a shaggy Irish terrier crouched outside the Ambassador's Paris bedroom. "Whiskey" was the dog's name, and no amount of lobbying could make Ambassador Herrick change it.