I am well aware that the cultivation of these three
qualities produces in the professional diplomatist a habit of colourless scepticism which is highly irritating to all who meet it. He dreads zeal so acutely that he comes to identify it with effort ; his mistrust of sympathy becomes so ingrained that his heart is as a despatch-box, to be opened only by a special key ; his impartiality is so diffused and equable that he regards even the most impassioned causes as the twittering of starlings in the thorns ; and his dislike of intuition makes him slow to accept ideas. I do not believe, however, that these grave defects can without danger be remedied by the injection of feminine enthu- siasm into the Foreign Service. Women will do well in the Foreign Office at home: they make excellent foreign correspon- dents: but not diplomatists. I believe that the necessary reforms are those which I understand are contained in Sir Malcolm Robertson's repo -t and which Mr. Eden is anxious to bring into operation. The fault of our Diplomatic Service in former days was that the young were given too few opportunities and that the old were far too safe. As a result, the more energetic among the young members tended at a certain stage to drift off into other professions, whereas those who remained felt assured that so long as they avoided zeal, sympathy and intuition they would in the end obtain their Embassy or their Legation. By the fusion of the Diplomatic with the Consular Service the Secretary of State will have at his disposal both a greater number of posts and a greater number of people. The old disadvantage, under which there was too little chance at the bottom and too much chance at the top, will thereby be largely removed. The young man, who in former days became either impatient or inert as an eternal Secretary of Embassy, will derive new zest from being appointed Vice-Consul at Adana or Hamadan. The older man will learn that, unless he takes more trouble to be active and up to date, he will end, not in some comfortable Legation, but in premature retirement at Weston-super-Mare. I feel certain that by these methods a magnificent Foreign Service will gradually be created ; but it will never be a service in which women will find the most useful scope for their genius.
Previous page
