Diplomacy: Penny Ante

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In 300 U.S. embassies, legations, consulates and special missions around the world, nothing is more likely to cause hot blood and cold sweat than mention of Brooklyn's Democratic Congressman John J. Rooney. As chairman of the House subcommittee on State Department appropriations, Rooney keeps a harsh eye and a hard thumb on what he calls "booze allowances for cooky pushers"—the representation allowance diplomats get for official entertaining. Last week the department's representation allowance request for fiscal 1962 was up before the parent House Appropriations Committee. Pared to meet Rooney's tastes, the $953,000 budget was well below the level provided by West Germany; it was barely $100,000 over the 1961 request, even though the U.S. has had to open 14 embassies and three consulates in new African countries. Result: U.S. diplomats will have to cough up an estimated $700,000 out of their own pockets for entertainment they consider essential to their jobs.

Because of the limit on representation allowances, top State Department professionals cannot accept such expensive key posts as London or Paris, which traditionally go to well-heeled amateurs. Multimillionaire Publisher John Hay Whitney, Ike's last Ambassador to the Court of St. James's, annually spent more than $100,000 above his $6,000 allowance. In four years in Rome, Paper King James D. Zellerbach spent $200,000 of his personal fortune for government party-giving. Even in lesser posts, Foreign Service careermen find it hard to get by. One minister-counselor in Paris asked to be relieved of duty because he couldn't stand the expense, and a veteran now being reassigned from Europe to South America says frankly: "I truly hope that social life at my new post is rather quiet, because I won't know how to make ends meet otherwise. Last year I could prove that out of my salary I had to spend $2,400 for purely professional reasons."

Simple Canapés. Except where wealthy men are in charge, U.S. embassies are often forced to serve bread while rivals offer cake. To celebrate the anniversary of the October Revolution, the Soviet embassy in Bonn last year hired the city's best club, lavished 500 guests with vodka, Crimean champagne and caviar. For the traditional Fourth of July celebration, able U.S. Ambassador Walter C. Dowling, a careerman, could afford only $287—enough to give 360 visitors a pass at trays of simple canapes and a sip of cheap German sparkling wine. In Leopoldville, where the Belgians established an Elsa Maxwellian standard of party-giving that the Congolese now regard as the norm for diplomatic life, U.S. Ambassador Clare Timberlake must keep up with the Joneses on a budget of $2,000. "I haven't asked for an increase and don't intend to," he says. "But I'd like to feel I could serve my country without being personally out of pocket every year."