FOREIGN SERVICE: Words After Waves

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Beginning at the bottom of the alphabet in Zanzibar 29 years ago, Alexander Wilbourne Weddell of Richmond, Va., now 63, worked his way to top rank in the U. S. foreign service. Two months ago Franklin Roosevelt called him from the U. S. Embassy at Buenos Aires to be first U. S. Ambassador to the victorious dictatorship of Francisco Franco in Spain (TIME, May 1). Last week Ambassador Weddell paid his first respects to Foreign Minister Count Francisco Gómez Jordana in Franco's capital, Burgos, and sounded off for the delighted Franco press as follows:

"There existed, it is true, two waves of propaganda in my country until recently, but I hope the American people will understand the reality of this historic moment. The Spanish people must not doubt that in the United States there exists a deep admiration for the character of this great country. Americans understand the enormous difficulties that must be experienced by a nation that has brought to a victorious conclusion a war of the magnitude of the Spanish crusade."

If any U. S. volunteers crusaded with Franco and his allies, A. Hitler and B. Mussolini, in Spain's civil war, they have kept it relatively dark. Some 4,000 U. S. volunteers crusaded against Franco. Of these, more than 20 were reported still in prison last week in Spain. If their emotions were mixed by Ambassador Weddell's words, uppermost was the hope that he would so quell the subsiding waves as to set them free.