A watercolor portrait of Norman Armour painted in Nassau, Bahamas in 1952.

Unfortunately there are a lot of reflections due to the glass. One day I will take a better picture.

Ocean’s 11 – New York Times
At the turn of the 20th century, when the American economy was in one of its epic periods of wealth creation, Europe still had an aristocracy worthy of the name, and flaunting wealth was much in fashion, yacht racing was in its golden age. In 1904, Kaiser Wilhelm II of Germany, himself an ardent if not overscrupulous yachtsman, offered a solid gold cup for a trans-Atlantic race from Sandy Hook, N.J., to the Lizard, near the tip of Cornwall in England. The race began on May 18, 1905, so that the kaiser could present the cup to the winner at the Kiel Week regatta in mid-June. That suited his propaganda purposes as well; he was hoping to present the cup to himself, having entered his schooner Hamburg. But it meant racing across the always dangerous Atlantic in often tricky late-spring conditions.

The challenge quickly attracted 11 boats, ranging in size from the full-rigged ship Valhalla, at 245 feet over all and 648 tons, to the tiny (relatively speaking) Fleur de Lys, at a mere 108 feet and 86 tons. The owners of this fleet were as varied as the boats themselves, except, of course, for the fact that they were all rich. Besides the kaiser, the owners included two British peers: Lord Brassey, the son of a man who had made a vast fortune building railroads; and the 26th Earl of Crawford, the holder of one of the most ancient titles in Europe. Among the American owners were the meatpacking heir Allison Armour, the banker Edmond Randolph, the steel heir Edward Coleman and Wilson Marshall, the heir to a New York streetcar fortune.

It was with much regret that I learned from Mr. Armour that he felt the time had come for him to relinquish his duties. I was pleased, however, by his assurance that the initial steps of the economic program in Guatemala were well under way. I recognize, of course, that much remains to be done in order to carry out successfully the plans your government developed during these past critically important months for overcoming the economic emergency brought about by Communist intervention in Guatemala.

I assure you that in the devoted effort of your Government to improve the welfare of the people of Guatemala, you can count on the same friendly cooperation of the United States as was manifested by Ambassador Armour with such distinction and wisdom.

Sincerely

“Mr. Clemen’s left eyelid lowered slowly in my direction (he was always on the side of the young, you know) and he spoke very deliberately, very slowly. ‘Yes Ma’am, I suppose we did, and I advise no boy of this generation to slide down a hill on such a contraption.’

“He then commenced a detailed description of such an adventure, describing the rapid disintegration of the sled, piece by piece. ‘First one runner decides it has found a better route to the bottom. Then the other follows its lead, and finally the boards themselves assert their independence, until the unlucky carpenter finds himself sliding racily down the hill on little more than the skin God gave him.’”

“Whereupon my Mother handed over the money and I went off to buy my sled; but I didn’t buy a Flexible Flyer. No, I bought a cheaper sled and used the rest of the money to buy my first copies of Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn.” – Norman Armour

Mr. Armour also met the remarkable Helen Keller (1880-1968), whose wondrous schooling by Anne Sullivan later inspired the play and movie The Miracle Worker.

“Helen Keller came over to our house, brought by Mr. Hutton … she was deaf, dumb and blind, you see, but she conquered all that in some extraordinary way … she put her fingers to your lips and you were supposed to speak and she would know what you were saying … I was terrified, as a small boy … and said something about the weather, I suppose.” – Norman Armour

For 30 years, Norman Armour had steered a steady, able course through troubled diplomatic waters: the Red Revolution in Leningrad, The Hague in 1920-21, Rome in the mid-’20s, Tokyo, Paris in the worst years of the depression, Canada, Argentina in the troubled times of 1939-44, then Francisco Franco’s Madrid.

He had everything a career diplomat should have: he was wealthy, studious, shrewd, affable, full of both principle and humor. Colleagues in the State Department regarded him with awe. One of them once said: “You can’t compare Armour to anyone else in the service; he’s one of a species, like Lincoln.”

Now, at 58, Armour was ready to step down. Like the good diplomat he was, he gave no reasons other than fatigue and a sense of duty done. But it was clear that he had found few satisfactions in Madrid; he told newsmen that he had observed no effective opposition to Franco inside Spain, no signs of reform.

Perhaps by giving two thankless jobs in a row to Norman Armour (who was said to have been eager for the Paris assignment), the State Department had used poor diplomacy toward one of its ablest diplomats. At a time when the foreign service desperately needed good men, it could have used him longer.

The Spanish assignment for Armour was a neat answer to a double problem. It would: 1) provide an important post for an able career man unposted since his recall from Argentina in July; 2) give the U.S. a competent observer in an old trouble spot soon likely to become Europe’s last existing Fascist state.

Norman Armour (of the Princeton, not the meat-packing Armours) had spent a good part of his 29-year career in trouble spots. As a diplomatic fledgling, he went through the Red Revolution in Leningrad, where he met a Russian princess, Myra Koudacheff, got her safely out of the country, and later married her. In Argentina, from 1939 until his recall, he rode the ups & downs of U.S. prestige like a veteran gaucho. In the years between, he was in Tokyo at the time of the Nanking incident, helped get the U.S. Marines out of Haiti, survived Chile’s disastrous 1938 earthquake. His dispatches continued to be unruffled, incisive, informative.

As Ambassador to Spain, Armour will replace a diplomat of a different type. A Columbia University history scholar, known to U.S. college students for his four-volume History of Modern Europe, Carlton Hayes had no diplomatic experience until he went to Spain in 1942. A front-rank Catholic layman who got on well with Dictator Franco, he was often criticized, mostly by the left-wing press, as an “appeaser.” To avoid embarrassing President Roosevelt in an election year, he offered his resignation. Refused then, it is sure to be accepted now.

Biography

Norman Armour, career diplomat and Assistant Secretary of State, was born October 14, 1887 in Brighton, England to American parents. He received his B.A. from Princeton in 1909 and graduated from Harvard Law School in 1913. Armour returned to Princeton to obtain an M.A. in 1915, whereupon he joined the State Department and was immediately posted to the U.S. Embassy in Paris. This was the first in a long series of assignments, placing Armour in the heart of revolutionary Russia (1916-1919), fascist Spain (1924), post-revolutionary Chile (1938), and Haiti during the withdrawal of American troops (1933). Among his other posts were: Tokyo, Rome, Uruguay, Argentina and Canada.

Armour married Russian princess Myra Koudacheff in 1919, after he helped her to flee her homeland. (Armour himself crossed the border to Finland disguised as a Norwegian courier.) Through witnessing the upheavals and perpetual instability of Russia and other countries, Armour came to loathe rebellion and to esteem and promote the dependability of the American system. The Washington Post reported, “Unlike many emissaries, he represented his country, not the country to which he was posted and certainly not himself.” For his considered approach, polished manner and patriotism, Armour earned promotions quickly, rising from 3rd Secretary of the U.S. Embassy in Petrograd, to Ambassador to Chile, to Assistant Secretary of State (1947-48).

He was reputed to be the “ideal” diplomat: straightforward, communicative, and aristocratically old-fashioned. As one paper explained upon Armour’s retirement: “The need nowadays is for men who know this or that expertly….the wide-ranging knowledge which Mr. Armour acquired from his rich experience and which his natural gifts tempered into ripe judgments would not come amiss amid the seething and striving and self-centeredness of the specialists.”

Princeton awarded Armour the Woodrow Wilson Award in 1957. After retiring, he continued to advise the State Department and give lectures at Princeton and elsewhere. He died in 1982.

Haiti

Name: Norman Armour
State of Residency: New Jersey
Foreign Service officer
Title: Envoy Extraordinary and Minister Plenipotentiary
Appointment: Jul 25, 1932
Presentation of Credentials: Nov 7, 1932
Termination of Mission: Recess appointment expired, Mar 4, 1933
Note: Commissioned during a recess of the Senate. Armour left post Mar 4, 1933; he returned Mar 8, and presented a copy of his letter of credence under his new appointment, Mar 23, 1933.

Name: Norman Armour
State of Residency: New Jersey
Foreign Service officer
Title: Envoy Extraordinary and Minister Plenipotentiary
Appointment: Mar 17, 1933
Presentation of Credentials: Apr 11, 1933
Termination of Mission: Left post, Mar 21, 1935

Canada

Name: Norman Armour
State of Residency: New Jersey
Foreign Service officer
Title: Envoy Extraordinary and Minister Plenipotentiary
Appointment: May 29, 1935
Presentation of Credentials: Aug 7, 1935
Termination of Mission: Left post, Jan 15, 1938

Chile

Name: Norman Armour
State of Residency: New Jersey
Foreign Service officer
Title: Ambassador Extraordinary and Plenipotentiary
Appointment: Jan 17, 1938
Presentation of Credentials: Apr 21, 1938
Termination of Mission: Left post, Jun 10, 1939

Argentina

Name: Norman Armour
State of Residency: New Jersey
Foreign Service officer
Title: Ambassador Extraordinary and Plenipotentiary
Appointment: May 18, 1939
Presentation of Credentials: Jun 19, 1939
Termination of Mission: Normal relations interrupted Feb 24, 1944; new Government of Argentina still unrecognized by the United States when Armour left post, Jun 29, 1944

Spain

Name: Norman Armour
State of Residency: New Jersey
Foreign Service officer
Title: Ambassador Extraordinary and Plenipotentiary
Appointment: Dec 15, 1944
Presentation of Credentials: Mar 24, 1945
Termination of Mission: Left post Dec 1, 1945

Venezuela

Name: Norman Armour
State of Residency: New Jersey
Foreign Service officer
Title: Ambassador Extraordinary and Plenipotentiary
Appointment: Sep 20, 1950
Presentation of Credentials: Dec 7, 1950
Termination of Mission: Left post Oct 2, 1951

Guatemala

Name: Norman Armour
State of Residency: New Jersey
Foreign Service officer
Title: Ambassador Extraordinary and Plenipotentiary
Appointment: Sep 15, 1954
Presentation of Credentials: Oct 18, 1954
Termination of Mission: Left post, May 9, 1955
Note: Commissioned during a recess of the Senate; recommissioned after confirmation on Dec 3, 1954.