MARGINAL COMMENT
By HAROLD NICOLSON
IN reading the many obituary tributes which have been paid to the late Belgian Ambassador, I have been struck by the fre- utiency with which he has been described as the last of the old school of diplomatists. It is true that for fifty-four years Baron Carnet de Marchienne was a member of the Belgian foreign service ; that for ten years he had been Minister and Ambassador in Washing- ton ; and that for almost twenty years he had been Ambasstdor in London and for son te time Dean of the Diplomatic Corps. It is true also that in manner and appearance he recalled the grace and courtesy of what, I suppose, is now a bygone age. The dignity of his every gesture, the refinement which he brought to all the details of_ !if; the importance which he attached to the elegancies of social intercourse, suggested at first sight that he did not belong to the age of the common man, but that he was a survival from the period of the great Edwardian diplomatists, the period of Mens- dorff and Paul Cambon, of Benckendorff and Soveral. Under his auspices the Belgian Ambassy became a symbol of continuity in a changing world ; one would pass from the rattle of our raffish exist- ence into something soft-carpeted, well-ordered, calm. Even when the bombs whistled and crashed around us the silent dignity of the Belgian Embassy remained unperturbed ; the windows might be patched or pasted together, but the tapestries, the pictures and the Sevres china remained. In the frightening days of 1940, with his own country invaded, his King exposed to unjust vituperation, and England menaced by impending invasion, Baron Cartier refused to be deflected from the calm tenour of his ways. His influence during those distressed and anxious weeks was a sedative influence ; he calmed the anxious hearts and stricken nerves of many a foreign colleague ; he became a landmark of undramatic confidence ; he stuck to London ; and his British friends must always feel grateful to him for his unruffled faith in victory when victory seemed doubtful indeed.
His experience was long and wide. He had spent many years of his life in the Far East, and could speak with wisdom of conditions and tendencies in China and Japan. He understood and loved the American people, and well realised with what patience one must watch the tides and eddies of the great democracy of the United States. He had an intimate and contemporary acquaintance with European politics and personalities, and possessed a remarkable gift for differentiating the momentary from the permanent. And although he might seem in appearance to belong to a receding age, he was in fact more alive to the strength and weakness of demo- cracies than were many of his superficially more modern colleagues. No other foreign diplomatist took so constant or well-informed an interest in the daily functioning of our• parliamentary institutions. He believed with firm conviction that the British House of Commons was the true pulse of the nation. Hour after hour he would sit there in the diplomatic gallery listening patiently to even the dullest debate. He came to know the relative value and influence of our politicians better than any foreign diplomatist ; he was universally welcomed as a true House of Commons man. I have often regretted that foreign diplomatists in London are so frequently deterred by the reserve and privacy of our social life from piercing below the surface of official or sectional society: Baron Cartier, fascinated as he was by the combination of the static and the dynamic in our body politic, took immense pains to understand. He was a club- able man, and would enjoy mixing in circles outside the usual orbit of official or diplomatic life. He acquired by these methods an intimate knowledge of our national institutions and character. It Was this knowledge which enabled • him, when the supreme crisis came, to estimate with undeviating lucidity and faith the potential strength of our resistance.
* * * * Baron Cartier acquired a position in our political life which extended beyond that usually occupied by the representative even of a loyal and much tried ally. As dean of the diplomatic body he was able during the difficult days to exert, as I have said, a sedative influence upon his colleagues in London. His known affection and respect for the people of this country induced men of every political party to regard him with friendly confidence ; he became, as he himself would often say, " a member of the family." And, being a highly civilised man and one of great humanity and wisdom, he was often consulted in matters wholly unconcerned with Anglo-Belgian relations. His contribution to the common victory was thus far greater than is generally realised ; and his death will leave a gap which cannot readily be filled. It is sad to feel that the last years of his mission were clouded with much perplexity and some unhappiness. Although he rejoiced in the liberation and rapid recovery of his own country, he was deeply perturbed by the constitutional crisis which thereafter arose. He felt a deep personal loyalty to the King of the Belgians and was not in sympathy with the policy of the Belgian Government in deny- ing to the Belgian people the opportunity of expressing their own wishes upon the dynastic question. He was unwilling to return to Belgium until this issue had been solved upon what he believed to be the true democratic and liberal basis. Tp this political per- plexity was added a more intimate sorrow, when his nephew, who had fought bravely in the resistance movement, lost his life. *
It would be sad indeed if Baron Cartier were to prove in fact the last of the old school of diplomatists. Such men, having devoted half a century to the theory and practice of diplomacy, had acquired great professional aptitudes. They had learnt the lesson that the art of diplomacy is not that of achieving dramatic triumphs or scoring sudden victories ; they knew too well that such successes leave behind them a heritage of resentment and humiliation. They had learnt that diplomacy, if it is to produce any permanent or beneficial results, must of necessity be a patient business, and one which must rely for its effect not upon overt or dramatic gestures but upon the gradual accumulation of confidence. They had come to regard war as the most horrible of international maladies and to see themselves as fellow doctors and scientists working on the technical level to prevent, or at least to mitigate, the incidence of disease. They knew from long experience that cunning or duplicity cannot be even momentarily successful and that the business of diplomacy, as that of sound commerce, is the patient establishment of credit, the inviolability of contract, and the exchange of advan- tages. And having passed all their lives in the' profession, having known each other often from their youngest days, they had acquired an exact assessment of each other's reliability, a perfect working knowledge of who could be trusted and who could not. It may be that in many ways the conventions of the old diplomacy were cumbrous, inscrutable and lethargic. Yet the slap-dash diplomacy of our modern times, which leaves behind it such divergences of interpretation and so many imprecisions, cannot as yet claim to constitute an improvement. Assuredly it is quicker than the older method ; but is it more comprehensible? Is it as conciliatory or exact?
Baron Cartier de Marchienne was a fine exponent of the old and. to my mind, admirable school. He combined all the best traditions of his profession with a lively awareness that circumstances had changed. The fingers of some of our modern diplomatists seem to have turned into thumbs ; Baron Cartier had the utmost delicacy, the gentlest sympathy of touch. I remember meeting him a few days only before Dunkirk. The immediate future seemed dark indeed. I sought to assume a brightness of confidence, even a gaiety of manner, which assuredly I did not feel. He made no comment upon my sprightliness. He talked, I remember, about the origins of the wine trade in Belgium, and how from the fifteenth century they would import burgundy in return for wool. But when he left he placed his hand upon my shoulder and spoke in a low voice. "You are," he said, " a very great people."
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