National Affairs: Stand-In

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Secretary of State Byrnes spent more than half his 18 months in office traveling about the world. In George Marshall's 24 months as Secretary, he had been away from his desk more than 200 days. The new Secretary, Dean Acheson, wanted to keep his toothbrush and razor at home. Last week, at his urging, President Truman nominated Philip C. (for Caryl) Jessup, 52, to be the nation's first official ambassador-at-large,* and the nation's $25,000-a-year representative at diplomatic meetings at home and abroad.

It was the kind of work that friendly, unassuming Philip Jessup had been tackling ably but not dramatically most of his adult life. Jessup served overseas in World War I in the infantry, spent his next 20 years becoming an expert on international law. As a professor of international law and diplomacy at Columbia, he worked hard at the theory of law among nations, learned the frustrating practical side of it as assistant solicitor to the State Department, and as an aide to tough old Elihu Root at Geneva. He was assistant secretary general of the first Council session of UNRRA, played a part in the birth of U.N. at San Francisco. Last year Harry Truman made him deputy U.S. representative to the U.N.'s Little Assembly.

A cool, unruffled speaker with a shy, dry wit and an impressive talent for fashioning an air-tight argument, Jessup was a welcome change from the windy speechifying of ailing Delegate Warren Austin and the arm-pumping forensics of Texas' minor statesman, Tom Connally. He soon began to carry more & more of the U.S. load: the debates over Palestine and Indonesia, the showdown last fall on Berlin. After Lawyer Jessup had demolished Lawyer Vishinsky in the Berlin debate with a damning, well-documented indictment of Russian policy (TIME, Oct. 18, 1948), one Western European delegate commented admiringly: "That was the best presentation I've heard from the American side in the three years we've been going." Secretary Acheson would like to have a whole task force of roving negotiators like Philip Jessup.