Diplomacy: Come to the Party

Adlai Stevenson once said of Marietta Tree, "When you find someone closely identified with the intellectual and aristocratic communities who is also a positive, active, working Democrat, it tends to encourage everyone in the party." Mrs. Tree, 47, is a willowy (5 ft.

10 in., 135 Ibs.) blonde patrician, the granddaughter of Dr. Endicott Peabody, founder of Massachusetts' Groton School. Once divorced, she is now the wife of British Investment Magnate Arthur Ronald Lambert Field Tree, a grandson of the original Marshall Field.

Marietta would be an addition to most any party, certainly not excluding those that she throws herself. She uses her opulent New York town house and her impeccable British butler, Collins, to entertain Democratic intellectuals and rank-and-file alike.

A tireless party worker, she has ad dressed envelopes and rung doorbells just like anyone else. In 1954, while managing a losing congressional cam paign for Anthony B. Akers in New York's 17th Congressional District, she slipped away from a lavish reception for Britain's Queen Mother Elizabeth, changed to street clothes in her Rolls-Royce while riding to Democratic headquarters on election night. In 1956 she headed the Volunteers for Stevenson committee in New York; in 1958 she ran another losing campaign for Akers; in 1960 she was deputy chairman of the Citizens Committee for Kennedy; and in 1961 President Kennedy named her the U.S. representative to the Human Rights Commission of the United Nations' Economic and Social Council.

Last week Loyal Democrat Tree got another reward from her grateful party.

She was sworn in as U.S. representative to the U.N. Trusteeship Council, which oversees such places as the Mariana Islands, Nauru and Northeast New Guinea, with the rank of ambassador.

The job pays $24,500 a year and makes Marietta Tree, once a LIFE researcher, one of just three women who currently hold a full ambassador's position.*