Proud servant

by Ellis Briggs

Ellis O. Briggs (1899-1976) entered the U.S. Foreign Service in 1925. During the next thirty-seven years he had thirteen foreign assignments, seven (a career record) as ambassador - to the Dominican Republic, Uruguay, Czechoslovakia, Korea, Peru, Brazil, and Greece. An eighth ambassadorial appointment, to Spain, was cancelled when he retired because of illness. His memoirs are an exuberant record of a gifted diplomat, spanning the pre-World War II and wartime years, and the height of the cold war.