SOCIAL RANK DISPUTE.

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXVI, Issue 20255, 15 May 1929, Page 13

SOCIAL RANK DISPUTE.

VICE-PRESIDENT'S SISTER. STATUS AS OFFICIAL HOSTESS. Washington society was lately awaiting with polite, but nevertheless keen, interest the decision of the Secretary of Stale, Mr. Stimson, as to the precise social status of Mrs. Dolly Curtis Gann, sister of the Vice-president, Mr. Curtis. Mr. Curtis demanded that his sister, as his official hostess, should take precedence at official dinners and other State functions over the wives of foreign Ambassadors and Ministers. Before retiring the former Secretary of State, Mr. Kellogg, ruled that a sister-hostess must give way in social order to wives of foreign envoys. But Mr. Curtis has publicly protested against what he considers to be a slight, and demanded that Mr. Stimson should reverse his predecessor's decision. President McKinley was the first to stipulate that the Vice-president should come next to the President in the social order of Washington, and although the late Lord Pauncefote of Preston, as dean of the Foreign Ambassadors, protested, the rule has been retained ever since.

Mr. Curtis, however, is a widower, and makes his home with his sister, Mrs. Gann, and her husband, Mr. Edward Gann, a lawyer, and this fact prompted the Kellogg decision that Mrs. Gann could not enjoy the same social eminence as would the wife of the Vice-president. His ruling that she be seated after the wives of the Ambassadors and Ministers placed Mrs. Gann socially beneath the wives of the Chief Justice and the Speaker of the House of Representatives, who precede the wives of foreign Ministers, but not those of Ambassadors.

After considerable correspondence and suggestions it "was decided to recognise the claims of Mrs. Gann and to afford her the desired position at social functions attended by diplomats. The Vice-president's public airing of his woes has caused fashionable Washington to gasp, and the entil-e nation to indulge in a quiet smile over "the inconsistency of Democracy's care over such things as social rank," as the New York Evening Post remarks. It will be easy enough, too, for foreigners to laugh, the newspaper declares; but they must remember that European thrones and dynasties have tottered and even fallen on just such questions as this.