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Few days later George Hanson reported to the State Department in Washington, was promptly haled before a conclave of senior officials who looked reprovingly at him down their long diplomatic noses. He was informed charges had been brought against him on two counts: 1) While drunk, he had made remarks offensive to a friendly nation at the Chamber of Commerce luncheon. 2) He had been drunk at the Tolokonsky tea party. To friends George Hanson declared afterward that he had had just one cocktail before the Manhattan luncheon. Newspapermen who saw him at the tea were surprised to hear him described as drunk. So angry on his behalf were some members of the Press that they threatened to print the whole story if the State Department disciplined him.
Raymond Clapper, columnist of the Washington Post, one of the few to reveal last week any part of the story, declared that two famed U. S. citizens who had known Hanson in Manchuria and thought he was one diplomat in a thousand, lodged emphatic protests with the State Department. One was Karl Bickel, then president of United Press. The other was the late Will Rogers. Thereupon the State Department hierarchy decided to do nothing officially to George Hanson except to transfer him from Moscow to Addis Ababa, considered then about the darkest closet in which a diplomat could be confined. Soon, however, the Ethiopian capital took the spotlight as an important trouble spot and George Hanson's enthusiasm for his new job rose by leaps & bounds. He sailed away gaily taking his guns along and promising to bag an elephant while he was leading an exciting life in Ethiopia. The Press sent him off with plaudits as a "troubleshooter" on his way to a difficult post.
George Hanson never got to Addis Ababa. The State Department officials who wished to consign him to oblivion saw they had made a mistake. While he was on his way, they ordered Cornelius Van H. Engert to proceed from Cairo to take the Ethiopian post. Because George Hanson was "not familiar with the Near East," his orders were switched and he was told to proceed to Salonika, a Greek outpost with which he was also unfamiliar but where diplomatic limbo was certain. Soon after his arrival there, he fell ill. Invalided home, he sailed to Marseilles, boarded the Dollar Liner President Polk for the U. S. The State Department last week declared he was suffering from "sugar in the blood" and "nervous breakdown." His friends said he was suffering from despair over a career deliberately ruined by enemies in the State Department. Four days out from Marseilles George Hanson retired to his cabin one day after lunch, took out a gun and committed suicide.