Distressed Diplomats

FOREIGN SERVICE

Distressed Diplomats

U. S. Consul William P. George at Ismir, Turkey, reported that one of his clerks went insane because of his reduced income.

"I find that I am paying out of my salary, reduced 41%, not 15%, for the doorman of the chancellery and the night watchman," declared Ambassador to Spain Claude G. Bowers. "This is intolerable!"

One U. S. consul in Spain had to send his wife and children home, take a room in the slums.

"As I can no longer afford to pay school fees," wrote Minister to Iraq Paul Knabenshue, "and other incidental expenses of my children living apart from me, I am obliged to remove them from school."

"Things have now reached the stage," wrote Consul Rollin R. Winslow at Trieste, Italy, "where cream cannot longer be purchased for coffee, when eggs must be used sparingly, when cigarets must be purchased only on rare occasions, when threadbare clothing must suffice, and when any attempt to reciprocate social courtesies unavoidably received at the hands of local officials . . . is remotely out of the question."

An official at Alexandria, Egypt, having met fixed expenses, had a balance of $15 a month for doctors' bills, clothing, insurance premiums. He had to send his wife home to her parents, at their expense, start cooking his own meals.

At the Paris Embassy a woman secretary fainted from hunger.

All these tales of diplomatic distress and many more like them were unfolded by Assistant Secretary of State Carr to the House Appropriations Committee last week. "There has been more real suffering in the foreign service in the last six months than at any time in my knowledge," said Diplomat Carr, who has been in the State Department for 40 years. "Men have sacrificed their life-insurance policies. They have borrowed money. They have indulged in all sorts of sacrifices that no Government employe should be expected to indulge in."

With the President's assent, he urged that $7,000,000 be added to the State Department's supply bill to relieve foreign service conditions brought about by: 1) the 15% general pay reduction; 2) the 5%-to-6% increase in living costs abroad; 3) the 65% reduction in heating, lighting and rental allowances to diplomats under the Economy Bill. The dollar's decline had been compensated for in foreign service salaries in gold standard countries by paying in gold, but last week, as a final blow, the gold content was officially sliced 40%.

Mr. Carr's sorrowful story wrung the hearts of the House committee, but what could be done? The "gag" rule adopted last month prevented any extra appropriation being added to any bill (TIME, Jan. 22). To the rescue went Chairman McReynolds of the House Foreign Affairs Committee. Preparing a special relief bill, he notified newshawks: "You can inform our foreign service people for me that help is coming to them--and very soon."

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