Article from Saturday Evening Post, "Headaches of an Ambassador" by Henry F. Grady

o The author (center), with Viscount Louis Mountbatten and India's Pandit Nehru, at a Fourth of July party given by Mountbatten in New Delhi. WIDE WORLD Headaches of an Ambassador By HENRY F. GRADY Former U.S. Ambassador to Iran A U.S. official shows up drunk in Athens, the Russians call your wife a "blood- drinking woman," or a congressman gets fresh with a queen-it's all in a day's work, says the author, who here reports his most embarrassing and infuriating experiences. DON' Tsuppose I shall ever forget the horrified I of capitalist imperialism. I felt rather flattered, to fascination with which I once watched an exu- they wished to serve their country-an their tell the truth; I think an honorary society should be wives' social ambitions- - as United States ambassa- berant American congressman pat the Queen of formed for those who have thus been attacked by dors. I know that in 1948, when it was assumed that Greece on her lovely shoulder and announce, the Russians, although I'm afraid the organization 'You're the cutest little queenie I ever met!" Nor Governor Dewey would be elected President, the might be so large as to be unwieldy. will the memory soon fade of my battles by cable- number of political bankrollers who thought they While I felt that this Russian attention was some- gram with my own State Department or my battles were signing themselves up for diplomatic appoint- what more of an honor than receiving an unearned in person with various and sundry Russians. But in ments several times exceeded the number of diplo- degree from an American university or an unwanted sifting through my recollections of four and a half matic posts in existence, not counting, of course, medal from a foreign court, I must confess that I years as a United States ambassador, first in India, the really difficult and unpleasant stations. Some of thought things were getting a bit thick, as my then in Greece and finally in Iran, I think my favor- these inquiries were quite detailed-what sort of British colleagues would put it, when the same ite reminiscence concerns the fashion in which the house does the ambassador live in, how is the servant Soviet propagandist got around to describing my Soviet radio recorded my transfer from Athens to situation, the food supply and the social life? wife. Tehran. It seems that everybody and his wife wants to be "Henry Grady's blood-drinking woman," believe 'Henry Grady, the Butcher of Greece," the an ambassador, especially the wife. She wants her it or not, was the appellation applied to Mrs. Grady. Moscow radio shrilled, "has arrived in the capital of husband, who has had great success making soap or I thought of my gentle Lucretia, the sort who would Iran with his shirt drenched in the blood of Greek selling learned books, to crown his career in striped politely decline a glass of sherry offered at a ladies' patriots." These gory pleasantries, which the Reds' pants and spats and to be called His Excellency," garden-club meeting, and didn't know whether to propaganda radio was beaming to Iran, were the while she is given equal respect as Her Excellency." laugh or pound my desk in rage. Yet this was to be Russian way of acknowledging that I had in effect (I once sat next to the wife of a British colonial her invariable title on the Russian radio from then presided over the distribution of $1,500,000,000 governor, and heard constant reference to "H.E." - until we eventually left Iran for the sanity of worth of American aid to Greece. The 'patriots," of what "H.E." said, what "H.E." did, and only private life back home in San Francisco. course, were the guerrillas-many of them not slowly came to realize that "H.E." was not just When the national political campaign was in full Greeks at 1-who had plunged Greece into a hor- my husband," but His Excellency, the distin- swing, I am certain that a considerable number of rible civil war. There was more - the usual nonsense guished governor.) Being an ambassador does have heavy contributors to party funds on both sides of about my being a "lackey of Wall Street," and a tool its points, but as one who has, so to speak, been the fence were mentally picking the spots in which through the mill, I (Continued on Page 168)