"Lost Souls"

It looked like September 1914 at the Saint Lazare station in Paris one morning last week. Farewells were shouted, hands were wrung, a few tears shed--all the atmosphere of an official and precipitate evacuation surrounded the departure of So U. S. trade commissioners and commercial attaches and their families. Less than a week before Secretary of Commerce Roper had cabled most of the Department's European representatives to hand in their resignations, close their offices by June 30. when the fiscal year ends. If they wanted a free ride home they had to catch the George Washington on June 22. For reasons of economy. Herbert Hoover's commercial foreign legion was being disbanded.

"Ruthless," grumbled the official refugees as they stood on the Saint Lazare platform. Many had had six clays or less to sell or sublet their homes at a loss, dismiss their servants, recall children from school, wind up their bureaus' affairs, pack up, get out. The William L. Fingers of Paris fondled a month-old baby. Their plight was no less unpleasant than that of able Chief Commercial Attache Fayette W. Allport, who had recently given up a $25,000-a-year job to return to the service. Behind them they left two Commerce representatives to keep each other company in the 18-room suite at the new Paris Embassy.

"I've been through the War," declared DeForest A. Spencer of Vienna, "but I've never gone through anything like the sudden disruption of my home."

Ousted from Berlin was Chief Commercial Attache H. Lawrence Groves, 15 years in the service, and Trade Commissioner William T. Daugherty. That left the Berlin bureau halved. The London office was reduced from eleven to two. Offices at Belgrade, Berne, Bucharest, Budapest, Helsingfors, Lisbon, Oslo, Riga were abandoned entirely. Thirteen others were closed throughout the world.

''The separation of these officials from the service in no way reflects on their abilities," announced Secretary Roper. "It is hoped that it may be possible to find employment for many of them."

The possibility did not seem to cheer the retiring Commerce men as they clambered aboard the George Washington at Hamburg, Southampton and Havre with their wives, children and chattels. They promptly christened the boat "the ship of lost souls."

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