Just one day after Pehle’s memo to Morgenthau about how much State Dept cable speeds had improved in the previous weeks, the WRB discovered a serious problem with one cable in particular. Roswell McClelland, the American Friends Service Committee’s representative in Geneva, Switzerland, was the WRB’s first (and only) choice to be their rep in Switzerland. I’ll get into McClelland in a longer post, because I’m a huge fan of his and he is clearly the most influential WRB rep and possibly the most influential WRB staff member besides Pehle.
So the WRB writes to the AFSC in late January to ask if they can have McClelland. A WRB appointment would mean that he would have to resign his AFSC position. The AFSC reluctantly says McClelland can work for the WRB. So a cable goes to Bern to see if McClelland is interested. Leland Harrison writes to McClelland, McClelland takes a few weeks to think about it, then accepts. Now we’re in early March. Harrison cables the State Department to ask about McClelland’s salary and various other personnel questions. There’s no answer. So McClelland is just holding, waiting to be formally appointed. In mid-April, the WRB cables Bern to ask McClelland to meet with a man about relief in Italy. Harrison writes back, confused—is McClelland working for the WRB now? Is it official? The WRB tried to figure out what happened. As it turns out, they never received Harrison’s questions about salary. It got lost on George Warren’s desk at the State Department. So the WRB missed out on an entire month of having a rep in Switzerland, solely because of a lost cable.
