NEW AMBASSADOR

Wairarapa Times-Age, 7 February 1941, Page 5

NEW AMBASSADOR

MR JOHN 0. WINANT NOMINATED BY PRESIDENT ROOSEVELT. WELL AND FAVOURABLY KNOWN IN BRITAIN. (British Official Wireless.) (Received This Dav. 10.50 a.mJ RUGBY, February 0. Mr. John G. Winant, whose nomination by President Roosevelt as United States Ambassador to Britain has been submitted to the Senate will, If the nomination is approved, be welcomed in London, both as a man with a wide liberal outlook on international affairs and a loyal collaborator with President Roosevelt.

As Director of the International Labour Office, Mr. Winant was in frequent and close contact with members of the British Government and important political figures in this country as a whole, and he will be greeted, not as a stranger or even a newcomer, but as an able man who has exchanged a very important task for one in present circumstances even more important—the task of interpreting the United States to Britain and Britain to the United States. The knowledge he already has of British institutions and character and. in particular, of the whole background of Labour opinion, will be a valuable asset at a time when all sections of the British public are playing such a crucial role in the war and are anxious to leave the world in no doubt of their attitude to Herr Hitler’s new order. If Mr. Winant succeeds in maintaining the knowledge in the United States of the British attitude in this respect. so flagrantly misrepresented by German propaganda, this will be the first of his services to a cause which it is not doubted he has at heart —United States and British mutual understanding and co-operation, securing the triumphant defeat of all the forces now menacing the two Democracies.

Mr. Winant. who is 52 years of age. was a dying officer in the United States Army in the last war and saw service in France. He was Governor of New Hampshire for three terms. Though a Republican and at one lime regarded as a possible Republican Presidential candidate, he has enjoyed Mr. Roosevelt's personal friendship for many years.