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Last week Joe Kennedy had already shuttered and barred the palatial Embassy house at No. 14 Prince's Gate (donated to the U. S. in 1921 by J. P. Morgan) and moved to a country house away from the terror of bombs. Thence each morning he drove into London in a Chrysler, waved swiftly through traffic by bobbies who spotted the large "CD" disk (Corps Diplomatique) on the radiator-grille. Every day he had to see at least one member of Britain's War Cabinet. Meanwhile, there was the job of sending the nine Kennedy children* back to the U. S., three at a time and arranging to reopen their home at Bronxville, N. Y. (The other Kennedy homes, in Palm Beach, Hyannis Port, Mass., are closed.)
With 9,000 Americans to shepherd in England, with tangible U. S. business interests under his eye, with 150 Americans cabling from the U. S. daily for information on Athenia survivors, with British bigwigs to see, Franklin Roosevelt to keep informed, Joe Kennedy had a bigger job. Twice he had to make hard choices: on Tuesday, whether to get a haircut or have lunch (he chose haircut); on Wednesday, whether to get mad at the State Department or the Maritime Commission for delays in ordering South America-bound cruise ships to head for Europe instead (he chose Maritime Commission).
The Kennedy Way. The Maritime Commission operates today on a pattern Chairman Joe Kennedy laid out for it in 75 16-hour days—even as the Securities and Exchange Commission yet works along the lines he laid down in 431 work-crammed days.
Newsboy, candy-butcher, Harvard athlete—in three summers as a bus-driver he made $5,000—Kennedy's life has gone in the sections and jerks of a fast freight train. He was a bank examiner for 18 months, a bank president for three years (youngest in the U. S., at 25). For 20 months he built ships for Bethlehem Steel and for an Assistant Secretary of the Navy named Franklin Roosevelt. For two years, nine months he was president of the Film Booking Offices of America, for five months chairman of Keith-Albee-Orpheum, for six weeks special counsel to First National Pictures, for twelve weeks reorganizer of RCA, for 74 days special adviser to Paramount Pictures. Wherever he was, he was also Joe Kennedy, the Wall Street speculator, who once said: "Anyone can lose his shirt in Wall Street if he has sufficient capital and inside information."
The old libel that the State Department is made up of "cookie-pushers" whose chief concern is the hang of their striped trousers, was just true enough to make many a grave, correct, dry-worded gentleman in the Department dislike the appointment of Joe Kennedy to London. They correctly foresaw such incidents as Kennedy's telling Queen Elizabeth to her face that she was "a cute trick." They did not foresee that Queen Elizabeth would be pleased and flattered beyond words.
Several things spiked State Department guns: 1) Kennedy proved extremely efficient, did things faster and better; 2) he rapidly became closer to the British Government and people than any Ambassador anyone could remember. By Munichtime, a year ago, Kennedy had the Department with him, but he was preparing to resign.