REFLECTIONS: The Fog

• Share

"Like a garden," sighed Presidential Assistant John Steelman, sniffing at the 144 dark red roses. Over the roses, hands across the sea stretched and missed, and fumbling, missed again. Somebody had a perfectly sound idea that British and U.S. leaders should get to know each other better; but, like a lot of other good ideas, this one failed to bloom.

Some Pastry. Most of the 28 guests assembled among the roses in the Federal Trade Commission's private dining room in Washington had no idea why they were there. The chocolate-covered cupcakes on the sideboard gave some of them a clue: they were iced in white with the initials FBI.

"Ah," said a. guest, "where's J. Edgar Hoover?"

The host who entered was not Hoover but Federal Trade Commissioner Lowell Mason; he had paid $84 out of his own pocket for the luncheon, including the roses, currently selling at the summer bargain price of 72¢ a dozen. With Mason were familiar capital figures: New Jersey's lumbering Senator Albert Hawkes, Presidential Economic Adviser Edwin Nourse, White House Aide Charles Murphy, New York's Congressman Frederic Coudert. There was one stranger, a fierce-eyed, one-armed man whom nobody knew.

The guests began to ask questions again: "Who's this lunch for? What's it all about?'' Even Nick Carey, the FTC's elderly publicity man, shrugged: "I wish I knew."

The guests ate their way through shrimp cocktail, roast beef with Yorkshire pudding, mixed vegetables, coffee, before the confusion* began to clear a little. A Congressman noticed a tiny typewritten card almost hidden by the roses. He nudged the guest on his left. The nudging passed around the table like a ripple. The luncheon was in honor of the stranger, Sir Frederick Bain, no G-man, but president of the Federation of British Industries, which represents about 80% of British manufacturing.

Some Poetry. Before the dishes were cleared, Senator Hawkes arose, explained that he had to eat & run, quoted a poem while pointedly looking at Sir Frederick. Its moral:

If times are hard, and you feel blue,

Think of the others worrying, too . . .

And those who travel fortune's road

Sometimes carry the biggest load—the U.S.A.

A nervous yawn started by Steelman floated around the table. Mason at last introduced Sir Frederick with a reference to "the fog about the two FBIs." Sir Frederick, in a high-pitched stammer, replied with some verse that praised Queen Elizabeth for having "stayed in town while London Bridge was falling down." Then, shifting from one foot to the other, he spoke of international trade as "the one thread from which the fabric of peace and security in the world must be woven."

Helpful Steelman snatched a glass of water, proposed a toast "to His Majesty, the King of England"; Sir Frederick replied with a toast to the President of the U.S. Then the guests left the dreamlike luncheon in the cool seventh-floor dining room for the humid heat of Washington's streets. Said one: "It was awfully nice, but I haven't the damndest idea what it was all about." Said an Administration leader, veteran of many high-pressure capital lunches: "A luncheon without a motive is rather refreshing."