NEW AMBASSADOR TO LONDON

Southland Times, Issue 24355, 8 February 1941, Page 7

NEW AMBASSADOR TO LONDON

Nomination To U.S. Senate I i (British Official Wireless) RUGBY, February 6. Mr John G. Winant, whose nomination by Mr Roosevelt as United States Ambassador to Britain has been submitted to the Senate, will, if his nomination is approved, be welcomed in London both as a man with a wide, liberal outlook on international affairs and as a loyal collaborator of the President. As Director of the International Labour Office, Mr Winant was in frequent and close contact with members of the British Government and important political figures in this country as a whole. He will be greeted, not as a stranger or even as a newcomer, but as an able man who is charged with a very important task, that of interpreting the United States to Britain, and Britain to the United States. The knowledge he already has of British institutions and character and in particular of the whole background of Labour opinion will be a valuable asset at a time when all sections of the British public are playing such a crucial role in the war and are anxious to leave the world in no doubt of their attitude to Hitler’s New Order. If Mr Winant succeeds in maintaining knowledge in the United States of the British attitude in this respect, so flagrantly misrepresented by German propaganda, this will be the first of his services to the cause which it is not doubted he has at heart—mutual understanding and co-operation between the I United States and Britain to secure the I triumphant defeat of all the forces now I menacing the two democracies. I Mr Roosevelt, in nominating Mr Winant as ambassador to London, also nominated Mr Anthony Drexel Biddle tc go to London as ambassador to the refugee Governments of Norway, Poland, Belgium and the Netherlands.

Mr Winant has had a long political career in America. He was Governor of New Hampshire for three terms. During the last war he served as a captain with the American Expeditionary Force.