In the Public Eye

Evening Post, Volume CXII, Issue 135, 4 December 1926, Page 30

In the Public Eye

Colonel E. M. House. '.Colonel Edward Mandcll House, who was the late President Wilson's closest associate, reserved and/reticent to an extreme degree, living simply, _,and shunning all political . rewards. 'is a continual stimulus to the curiosity of his countrymen. One of them, Mr. Arthur D. Howden '. Smith, recently wrote a book about him. It is called "The Eoal Colonel.House," and is described by its au-

thor as "an intirhato biography 'only in the sense that -it reflects my own interpretation of Colonel House based up■qit" an acquaintance and friendship of several years." And Mr. Hbwden Smith , adds that "it is in no sense official, for I have

not sought access to confidential papers, nor have I asked for undue confidence from Colonel House." Colonel House, 'c^'e gathers, is , riot; prone to personal eoiifidences, and is much too interested ]inf; the work that he is doing <to give liluch thought to the impression he .makes on the public anywhere. But he ,'has personality, and many of his countpymen have attempted to put on paper t;ho impression: hV'makes'oil ■'strangers. Hpre are two such sketches:—"lt is a ,kind face, bright,! eager, and gentle, that goes with manners that never injured stranger or friend. As one looks a,t the whole man, the blue eyes are "£h.e centre of attention. Outside of •t&se luminous eyes there is no external 'feature that commands attention. It is, >perhaps, not so much an object that confronts one as a presence, an atmosphere created by" expression and' by manner." Thea again he is described as "a slender, middle-aged man, with . a grey, close-cropped moustache, well dressed, calm-looking, was coming quietly in, with an accent on the..'quiet.' :He was not pussyfooting in or slinking jin, or gliding in, but while he walked .< firmly, he walked quietly. He went up • to the desk, and..'asked1 the man presiding a question,in ai quiet tone. .He did not hiss the question, nor did he whisper it; he asked it quietly, and when he got his answer he bowed courteously and walked quietly to the elevator, which, catching the infection, 'shot quietly out of sight.'.' These are not very adequate descriptions of the man who has held positions without precedent in the" United States. The fact is that. Colonel House is a "discouraging person to make much fuss about. He is a worker, and despises the intimate paragraph. " v : Lori Lee of Tareham. . • In spite of his American marriage— he wedded Miss Eiith Moore, of New York, in 1899—and his varied travels, Lord Lee of Fareham is not: what is ; understood as" an ! -:■■-,.- ■■' • : :v ' "international fig-

:.-urdy'or even a national',one.-'.. It was not until lie :...took that very historic and interesting . estate of Chequers, with its Elizabethan mansion and 1500 acres, and bestowed it on tho nation to be for all time tho coun-

tiy residence of flic Prime Minister, that ho became in .my way, a public figure in England. That put Lord Loo in the newspapers, and made him known to the world. Ho has done a peculiar lot of odd jobs, both political and military, including the Presidency of-the Board of-. Agriculture and Fisheries, while some twenty years ago he f ,was chairman of an inter-departmentaf committee on the humane slaughtering of' animals. He. has been a»Lord of the Admiralty,' a member of Cabinet, chairman of the Royal Commission on tha Public Service of India, and has studied the problems of aerial defence. But from none of these many tasks has there come anything of outstanding record by which he may be remembered. There are just two things so far by which Lord Lee will be recalled. One is the gift of Chequers, and the other is the fact that he signed the first disarmament proposal'the Powers of the world formulated at Washington. When hi? was Minister of .Agriculture, members would pepper him. with questions and he, totally, innocent of the subject, would repulse them without ■ a quiver According to an American writer at the time he was visiting Washington;' "Lurd Lee has mastered the extremely difficult art of knowing Ms place, and making the most of that knowledge. In turn heia the.least bit, just a shade, patronising towards colonial lepiesentatives, who, however, Tiro not likely to be troubled by it." With newspaper men he is tho-urbane man of tho world, casually conversational, shooting a quick glance and steady eye at the questioner, without moving anything except his head... He likes, to bo comfortable and informal, -though he can bo reticent and still remain affable.

Mr. E. Zi. Doherty. The man who first made the American oil investigation blaze up was Mr. E. L. Doherty, son., whoso company, the Pan-American Petroleum and Transport, obtained the naval reserve oil lease in California from Mr. A. B. Fall, Secretary of the Interior, the two now being charged with, conspiracy at Washington, where their trial is a cause celebre. Mr. Doherty is a person of extraordinary audacity.. A little man, with white hair

and moustache, spectacled, and rather flushed in the cheeks, ho is anything but the popular idea of the blustering oil millionaire. He does hot shout, like Mr. Harry Sinclair:,- -He does not" ' glitter with diamonds; he is quiet.';. in 'his

' * dress. He neither smokes nor drinks; he is, in fact; rigid in the matter of drink, and does not countenance liquor being served to his guests. As.a' witness he-is composed and, speaks gently, with a-'■ faint' Irish hecenti He'is/not flustered "by crossexamination. "A 100,000 dollar loan to me," he replied to the Senate Committee' during his.; first .''examination, "is like" 50 dollars to 'another man. I make niauy loans to friends. You gentlemen" would be. surprised if I could give you tho figures." . The Committee ware impressed with this cool,-straight-, forward manner. Of course, Mr. Do!iVrty was putting on the cool manner j for the occasion. In reality, he is perhaps tho most irascible and choleric man hi the oil business. A story is told tiiat on one occasion he had to bo pre- | vented from throwing an unwelcome I visitor; clown tho lift from his office — 1 which'is on the, thirty-second floor of o:io of Broadway's skyscrapers. His ridden storni3 of anger are notorious, ius offico chiefs worship him, but in i'-.>:ir. Perhaps his Irish blood accounts ."fiii' much." He was the chief financial j backer of Sinn Fein in the. United

States. On two subjects—lreland and Mexico —ha is as wonderfully eloquent as an Irishman can be, and on an expedition by train or yacht he will talk for the whole, day on either subject, keeping his audience fascinated. His audacity sierved him well in the oil business. He was a prospector, and struck oil first in ■ California. Then ho prospected in Mexico, riding for days through the jungle, sometimes crawling on his stomach under the thick undergrowth to locate the smell of an oil seepage. He and his associates were the first to reach commercial production in Mexico. His last dollar was sunk, it is said, in building a pipeline while he was actually drilling his first well in the Southern fields. He was called a fool-for laying *'the pipe bofore he had the oil, but when he brought in his stupendous gushers people thought otherwise. He . must now be fabulously rich. Mr. Doherty is capable of taking lightning decisions, involving millions of dollars, with absolute fearlessness. He offered to return his nayal reserve, lease—on terms. A i^an of his audacious personality has not yet finished with the present trouble. Sir E. T. D'Eyncourt. A designer of great naval fighting machines, and the " architect" of several of Britain's- most modern warships, Sir E. Tennyson D 'Eyncourt, Director of Naval Construction and Chief Technical-Adviser to the Admiralty

over many anxious years, has retired and has returned to tlie service of Sir W. G. Armstrong, Whitworth and Co. 's Elswick works. He leaves the public service with the esteem of his colleagues, affectionate respect of his subordinates, and the record of eleven

years' invaluable work in naval construction. When Sir Philip Watts retired in the sumnvy of 1912 it was agreed that he could only be succeeded by a man with thorough training in the service of naval architecture and with largo and varied experience in the designs of all sorts of warships. Such a man was found in Sir (then Mr.) -Tennyson D'Eyncourt, Naval Architect to Armstrong, Whitworth, and Co;, and 'in appointing him the Board of Admiralty followed the example of their predecessors, who requisitioned from Armstrongs the services! of Sir William White- in 1885 and Sir Philip Watts in 1902. Sir Tennyson was trained at Elswick, and in 1898 he became naval architect and chief designer at Pairfields, where for some four years he was engaged on liner work. In 1902 lie went back to Elswick as assistant to Mr. J. B. Perrett, when the latter became chief naval constructor there. Sir Tennyson gained wide experience, not. only in design work generally, but in estimating the cost of ships, and during the negotiations of his firm with foreign .countries, notably the South American republics. At the Admiralty ho was re sponsible for the Boynl Sovereign type of battleship, the battle-cruiser Hood, and the plans for the new cruisers which' are being built for the protection of British trade routes, while his mercantile experience at Fairfields and Elswick stood him in good stead when he had to obtain ifrom private yards the smaller ciaft necessary -to deal with the''submarmß peril*/ -Sir" Tennyson, 'wlio*was chairman of tho committee of experts which evolved the tanks, was given the C.B. in 1915,' and created K.C.B. two years later. Mr. H. C. Hoover. Recently there has devolved on Mr. Herbert C. Hoover a new leadership— the-development of commercial aviation in 'the .United States. While it ' :- ' '■'■'■' was taking form,

in the shape of'a new branch of the 'Department of Commerce, Mr. Hoover, on a trip West, gave a new expression to one of his old leader-ships-—the extension of inland waterways. . Between times he ; probably gave his attention, to a dozen or more of.

tlio numerous other leaderships that he has assumed since ho became Secretary of-Commerce six years . ago. These range from the purely philanthropic, like those of child welfare and the bet-ter-homes movements, to those more'exclusively economic. And he is constantly taking on new leaderships and culti.vating more for others to take on. In 1920 the man who had fed bleeding Beligium and then-served as benign "tsar of the American kitchen" loomed definitely on the horizon of Presidential prospects. And Mr.: Hoover quite patently was not averse to that kind of place in the sun. He v was then, however, a babe in the woods of practical polities—perhaps that is. why he was there—a precocious youngster whose knowledge of the political game as played in America consisted of little more than the well-worn maxims. Now all persons close to him unite in the declaration: "Mr. Hoover is utterly without political ambition." They do not pretend that he wottld not like to be President. What they maintain is that Mr. Hoover's aspiration are satisfied in his present position, and that no "promotion," in or above the Cabinet, lures him in the slightest degree. Yet if he were "kicked upstairs" he probably would not grumble. Mr. Hoover undoubtedly likes his job, for he has turned down others that would have paid several times as much. "I know how to make money and that no longer interests me," he is quoted by a personal friend as saying. "I don't fully know how Government may best serve human beings. That does interest me.M Mr. Hoover has "made" no money—that is, in the sense of giving his time to it—since ho was ' called from a highly successful money-making career in August;1,1914,. by cries for help from'groups of his countrymen in distress in Europe because of the World War. Mr. Hoover supplied- what they needed —in the main leadership—and saw them out of their difficulties. He was then just turned 40, a mining engineer of''renown, who had aftqiiircd a fortuns'.iiv '■• operations ■'• -.outside- the United States. A few mouths later he v.*as knovrn to all the,world as director of the Belgian'relief enterprise. He is now in the early fifties, with twelve years of public_ service behind him, and, in so far as i 3 kiiown,"'no other kind in his plans for the futuce. He is a bit stouter than he used to be, his countenance has, taken .on a middle-aged look which pictures of him in his early fame never showed, and lie'is much surer of himself.in purely •■ political situations than whcii, : with the Presidential beo buzzing first in his ears, he was not sure to what political party ho owed feasance.