He then lived in "a commodious old house in Georgetown with his mother to act as hostess on the occasion of his entertainments", until posted to Peking as secretary of the embassy.

[12] He managed the State Department budget for a time in the 1920s, and later said he thought it "an obligation" to spend the entire amount in order to support the argument for additional appropriations.

[15] Kirk was assigned to Moscow as embassy counselor and consul general effective March 18, 1938,[16] where he was the senior official in the nine-month interim between the service of Ambassadors Davies and Steinhardt.

[2][17] He served as chargé d'affaires in Berlin beginning in May 1939 and became the senior officer when the American ambassador, Hugh R. Wilson, was recalled to protest the anti-Jewish attacks of Kristallnacht.

[19] The recall of Wilson as a way of protesting Kristallnacht greatly offended the Nazi regime, and senior German officials generally snubbed Kirk to show their disapproval.

[20] The American historian Abraham Asher described Kirk's dispatches from Berlin as generally accurate, though his lack of high-level contacts limited his sources of information.

[22] As Hitler continued to refuse to answer Roosevelt's telegrams, Kirk was sent to see der Fűhrer in the Reich Chancellery with a copy of Mościcki's reply.

[22] As Hitler refused to see him, he instead met on the evening of 26 August with the state secretary of the Auswärtiges Amt, Baron Ernst von Weizsäcker.

[23] Weizsäcker replied he would pass on Kirk's note for "the consideration of the Foreign Minister", and was otherwise evasive about what his government was planning to do in response.

Discussing with noted dissident Helmuth James von Moltke the need for Germany to suffer complete defeat with no one to blame but its Nazi leaders, he said: "Do you want to know my solution?

[25] Kirk served briefly as embassy counselor in Rome before becoming minister to Egypt in 1941,[26] when Time magazine described him as "smooth, spare".

[28] Kirk took the view that it was crucial that the British 8th Army stop the advance of the German Afrika Korps, and given Farouk's pro-Axis sympathies, Lampson's high-handed treatment of the king was necessary.

Once the Allies won control of the region, he stressed political analysis and repeatedly underscored the critical role of the Egyptian capital in Arab nationalism.

[31] As Kirk looked to the end of the war, he anticipated a post-colonial world in which nations operated freely in a free enterprise environment, unlike Secretary of State Cordell Hull who expected the persistence of traditional spheres of influence, notably that of Great Britain in Egypt.

As ambassador, Kirk was noted for his eccentricities such as wearing lavender silk tuxedos; maintaining a houseboat on the Nile flamboyantly decorated with white ostrich feathers and a framed picture of his mother with candles burning around it; and his insistence on only drinking milk from an Egyptian water buffalo he adopted and named after his mother.

[28] Even through Kirk was as openly gay as it was possible to be in the 1940s, he was popular with the diplomatic corps in Cairo, who liked him for his charm, and his frequent parties on his houseboat were always well attended.

When the American Office of War Information produced an Italian-language publication, Kirk insisted it be labeled propaganda to maintain a clear distinction between what Italians were accomplishing for themselves or not.

[40] Kirk predicted in 1945 that future diplomats should be technical experts "chosen for the ability not only to diagnose economic, industrial and political trends, but also to adjust their dislocations before they can start wars."

"[41] In the 1920s, when he was counselor to the American Embassy in Rome, Kirk remodeled a significant building in Georgetown, the Robinson house, at the corner of Wisconsin Avenue and R Street and "filled it with furniture, rugs, hangings and objects of art brought from the Orient.

"[42][43] In 1942 he sold this estate, including its "elaborate formal gardens, outsize ballroom, marble-floored billiard room, and swimming pool", to Evalyn Walsh McLean, mining heiress and owner of the Hope Diamond.

He filled a large enclosure the size of a tennis court with "Renaissance tables and settees covered in ivory silk", according to Life magazine, to create what he termed "a sort of cozy sitting room".

[47] In 1945 he attributed "his excellent health to the fact that he has never worn himself down by any form of exercise more violent than scratching, which he only does when suffering from insomnia at 6 a.m."[2] He planned to retire to Arizona and bought a piece of land in the White Mountains at the end of World War II.

[2] Another diplomat reported that he retired to the mountains of Colorado and "amused himself operating a ranch and raising cattle" for a few years before relocating to Texas.

[49] In his 1967 memoirs, George F. Kennan sketched an affectionate portrait of Kirk, as he knew him in Berlin before America entered World War II: "a confirmed bachelor, profoundly saddened by the recent death of an adored mother who, while she was alive, had preempted much of both his companionship and his emotional life, Kirk drowned the inner emptiness in the performance of his arduous official duties", sleeping in an office alcove while working 16 to 18 hours daily.

But behind this facade of urbane and even exaggerated sophistication there lay a great intuitive shrewdness and a devastating critical sense of humor, directed to himself as well as others.

After service as Ambassador in Egypt and Italy, he sidled, quietly and unobserved, out of all of our lives.Kirk claimed he escaped from diplomatic functions by whatever ruse the situation required.

"In a case of this sort, Kirk recommends slow motion, which, he says, often prevents witnesses from even noticing a maneuver which, if executed fast, might horrify them.