National Affairs: That Awkward-Seeming Man

After five years in London, John Gilbert Winant resigned last week as U.S. Ambassador to the Court of St. James's. He would be succeeded by William Averell Harriman, who quit a month ago as U.S. Ambassador to Russia. Winant would assume a new post as permanent delegate to the United Nations Economic and Social Council (a body he helped create).

Most of Washington wondered why Harriman got the job—he had served competently but not brilliantly in Moscow, had come home saying he wanted to stay there. As for quiet Gil Winant—the nation seemed to remember him best as the man who looked...