When an embassy wife isn’t worrying about a change in government at home, which may mean the recall of her husband, she’s worrying about getting her daughter properly married. A lot of the debutantes of the embassy set are beginning to get American ideas after attending American schools. The foreign aristocrats don’t like it.
Embassy wives have rarely been known to fool around. On the whole, embassy children behave themselves. When they don’t, they get packed off to schools in their own countries.
With the exception of the Iron Curtain diplomatic slums, there is considerable camaraderie among attachés of the various embassies, though usually on equal strata. They go dancing in the hotels, visit at each other’s homes, ride and play golf together. Some time ago, an attempt was made to start a United Nations Club at R and 19th Streets, by Meredith Howard, who is the twin sister of Mrs. Teddy Hays. Hays, a big Democrat and White House intimate, is assistant to Federal Security Administrator Oscar Ewing, the socialized-medicine man. The idea was to get younger members of the embassies together, but it blew up when Miss Howard left town with no public explanation.
When it comes to con games, the diplomats and foreign missions could show Yellow Kid Weil something.
Washington and New York are constantly being dazzled by members of foreign missions who come here talking about purchases in hundreds of millions (the dough to be put up by Uncle Sam).
Salesmen, sure-thing boys and big executives turn on every tap to entertain the foreigners and grab their business.
Girls are provided, expensive gifts are passed, and plenty of money changes hands. Then, suddenly, the mission packs up, leaves without buying, says it can’t find what it wants.
Cooks and butlers in every Washington embassy get kickbacks from the merchants. Groceries, meats and other household goods are overpriced on a regular scale for the embassies, with a rebate going monthly to the aforementioned functionaries.
Lower-echelon foreigners have their wild parties in the Washington field offices of the United Nations. There is no central installation of the international body in the capital, but offices are spread out around the town.
One of the principal places for after-work revelry is in the U.N. offices in the Longfellow Building, on Connecticut Avenue, where booze and babes are available every day after five.