Word: winants
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Dates: during 1940-1949
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After five years in London, John Gilbert Winant resigned last week as U.S. Ambassador to the Court of St. James's. He would be succeeded by William Averell Harriman, who quit a month ago as U.S. Ambassador to Russia. Winant would assume a new post as permanent delegate to the United Nations Economic and Social Council (a body he helped create...
Most of Washington wondered why Harriman got the job-he had served competently but not brilliantly in Moscow, had come home saying he wanted to stay there. As for quiet Gil Winant-the nation seemed to remember him best as the man who looked like Lincoln...
Refreshing Change. In London, Gil Winant was a striking contrast to his predecessor, that ruddy salesman, Joe Kennedy. He gangled; his hair straggled down in a black shock over a craggy face in which only the eyes crackled; he vibrated with a strange intensity. Once, shortly after his arrival in 1941, a luncheon crowd demanded a speech. Winant rose with a glazed look, and for four straight minutes of silent agony, stood shifting from one leg to the other. Then he whispered: "The worst mistake I ever made was in getting up in the first place...
...things-the blitz, the grinding work of the wartime embassy, the immense task of selling Britain to the U.S., and the U.S. and Britain to Russia-held no such terrors for Ambassador Winant. In high conference he was slow, sure, and overwhelmingly honest. After bombings he walked the streets of London, helping dig people out. The British grew to love his gaunt figure. He talked to them in trains, buses, subways, and ministries, and reported shrewdly to the President-whom most of the world thought of as the real U.S. Ambassador to Britain. To Britain's leaders, Winant plugged...
...effect was neither sudden nor spectacular. The results of his embassy were slow but lasting; they showed in Allied war solidarity, in understanding between nations, and in the lasting impression of America-at-its-best that Gil Winant left in Britain...