ABSTRACT
The new British ambassador came to Washington in early 1941. A distinguished statesman, former viceroy to India, and foreign secretary for the previous three years, Lord Halifax nonetheless had little first-hand knowledge of the United States and even less “feel” for the vagaries of American politics. Gaffes soon occurred. The ambassador went fox-hunting in Virginia during the Congressional debates over lend-lease; he treated defeated presidential candidate Wendell Willkie as though he were the shadow prime minister; and he wrote long reports to London bemoaning the inefficiency and irrationality in the policy process in Washington. Halifax expressed amazement at the deference President Franklin D.Roosevelt seemed to pay to every ripple of public opinion. He was aghast at the distance and suspicion that separated the White House and Congress along Pennsylvania Avenue. Nor could he make sense of the institutional crosscurrents and personal rivalries among the various executive departments, “who might almost as well be the administration of different countries.” Finally, Halifax used a favorite metaphor: “I suppose it is rather like a disorderly line of beaters out shooting; they do put the rabbits out of the bracken, but they don’t come out where you expect.”1
