Coert du Bois left Batavia in late June 1948.In all likelihood,he was embittered by the failure of his mission; perhaps he was also annoyed with Dutch machinations in Washington that prompted the State Department to recall him.Du Bois vacated his position on the UN Security's Council's Good Offices Committee in Java without taking leave of old friends such as Van Mook,whom he had known since the late 1920’s.The ostensible reason for being summoned back to the United States was a recurrence of his long-standing problems with coronary disease.

His abrupt departure from the diplomatic scene in Java, however, gave rise to renewed Dutch hopes for his replacement with someone “of a very high caliber,” who would not disappoint the Dutch community for a third time. Rather than attributing Graham and Du Bois’ pro-Indonesian inclinations to their sincere political convictions concerning the legitimacy of Indonesian nationalism, Dutch cynics concluded that it was Americans’ lack of sophistication about the complexities of Southeast Asian societies that undermined their effectiveness on the Security Council's Good Offices Committee.

The next US diplomat to be commissioned as US delegate to the GOC in Batavia was H.(Horance) Merle Cochran.Upon hearing about the appointment of the new American representative to the Good Offices Committee, the Dutch Ambassador in Washington cabled his findings concerning Coert du Bois’ successor to The Hague.Although Cochran was hardly a known personality to the Netherlands Embassy staff, the State Department had assured Van Kleffens that the Dutch would be dealing with a “first-rate man.” Cochran, who was in his mid-fifties and had been a US Foreign Service officer since 1919, had most recently served as an inspector of American diplomatic posts in Eastern Europe. The Dutch Ambassador informed his colleagues in Batavia that Cochran should be seen as a “dark horse”with a long-standing but obscure State Department history. In 1941, he had been sent on a special mission to China, whereas his latest assignment made him responsible for delivering top secret messages to US Embassies and Consulates in Moscow,Warsaw, Belgrade, Bucharest, and Vienna – confidential communications “that are not even entrusted to the most secret codes.” He should be regarded, therefore, as “a moon-like figure,” which flourished in the secrecy and anonymity of refracted light.