MARGINAL COMMENT .
By HAROLD NICOLSON
IN the House of Commons the other day, Mr. Mayhew, in reply to a Parliamentary question, announced that the regulations for Branch B of the Foreign Service had now been approved by the Whitley Council of the Foreign Office and would shortly be promul- gated in the London Gazette. He explained that this Branch B would consist of persons appointed for executive and clerical duties, and that it would be composed of some 1,5oo officers, divided into six grades and rising from £125 a year to L1,600. These regulations have now been published and are of considerable interest : they represent an important stage in the long process of modernising our Foreign Service, a process which was initiated almost forty years ago by the late Sir Eyre Crowe and Lord Hardinge, which acquired impetus owing to the reforming zeal of Sir Victor Wellesley and Mr. Anthony Eden, and which will before long become an accomplished revolu- tionary fact. Those who criticise our Foreign Service on the ground that it is a survival from a feudal past, and who complain that our representatives abroad do not reflect, either in their manner or their convictions, the popular trends of the twentieth century, seem un- aware that they are speaking of something which assuredly did exist in 1907 but which does not exist in 1947. The old income qualifica- tions have for many years been abolished ; the nineteenth-century system of nominations did not survive the first World War ; the three Services are to be fused into one ; and there exists today no social or financial disqualification such as would prevent the son or daughter of any taxi-driver from entering the reformed Foreign Service and from ending his or her life as an Ambassador with a broad ribbon across his or her chest. Yet the legend persists, and its persistence deters many admirable candidates from presenting themselves for fear of a rebuff. I am not saying that it is an easy thing for any boy or girl to romp into the Foreign Service ; the competition is intense and the examination stiff ; all I am saying is that the modern candidate need possess no qualifications other than his or her personal ability and character.
• * * This new Branch B is intended to provide the Foreign Service with a trained and corporate body of clerical assistants, analogous to, but not identical with, what used to be known as the Second Division. Candidates for this Branch can present themselves for examination between the ages of sixteen and eighteen and a-half. They will be called upon to perform thc non-political functions of our Embassies and Legations abroad and, in some cases, the minor duties at Consular posts. The examination will not, of course, be comparable to that required for entrants into the Senior Branch, namely, Branch A. But a young boy or girl who wisiies to enter in early youth a profession which will provide many opportunities, a great variety of functions, and the chance of residing in several foreign countries, will find in this new Branch an opportunity which will be both interesting and secure. The Foreign Service itself will also acquire from this innova- tion a loyal body of trained clerical assistants ; it will be a great improvement on the former haphazard methods. In the old days such assistants were recruited upon an empirical, insecure and volunteer basis. They had little prospect of advancement and little sense of corporate loyalties. The whole thing has now been tidied up, to the great benefit both of those who serve and of those who need their services. No longer will such assistants have to be wheedled into serving abroad ; they enter this new Branch on the understanding that they must be prepared, if instructed, to proceed to any part of the world. * * * * The creation of this new Branch of clerical assistants, possessing a corporate status and exercising defined functions and responsibilities, is in truth an immense improvement upon old happy-go-lucky ways. When I first entered the Diplomatic Service in 1909 we were allowed practically no clerical assistance at all. The Second Division clerks in the Foreign Office did, it is true, exist to open envelopes, to provide previous papers, and to enter telegrams and despatches in the registers. Yet even in the Foreign Office all papers of a con- fidential nature were enclosed in special green jackets and had to be registered in the department itself. There did exist, even in 1909, a small pool of typists, some of whom were rumoured to understand the mysteries of shorthand. Yet most of my time, when I entered the Foreign Office, was occupied by such subsidiary duties as indexing, typing, deciphering telegrams and despatch- ing to irritable and exacting Cabinet Ministers the pouches in which the Foreign Office papers were contained. I am not saying that this system did not possess certain moral advantages. After all, we had all received a highly expensive educa- tion ; we had passed a competitive examination which was about as stiff as the Civil Service Commissioners could devise ; and we had spent years abroad mastering at least three foreign languages. It might have been that, thus equipped and endowed, we should have imagined ourselves to be men of high attainment and capable of directing the affairs of state. To be relegated from the outset to menial tasks may well have moderated conceit and increased sub- servience. And, above all, we did learn to type—an aptitude which in after years has proved of incalculable benefit. The point is, how- ever, that we did not type very well. * * In missions abroad no clerical assistance of any nature was in those distant years provided. A third Secretary at an Embassy had to spend his whole time deciphering telegrams, keeping registers and typing the endless despatches which his chief or the Service Attaches produced. This left him little time either to acquire the language of the country in which he was stationed or to absorb the political or diplomatic knowledge needed for his future career. I have, I suppose, been overworked all my life (and much enjoyed it), but I have seldom been to overworked as I was when Third Secreeary at Constantinople during the first Balkan war. Errors were, I 'egret to say, all too apt to occur. On one occasion, in a fit of careless rapture, I awarded the C.M.G., not as instructed to the Consul at Basra, but by inadvertence to the Vice-Consul at Hodeidah. On another occasion, during the rush of " bag-day," we allowed an amiable Member of Parliament who was on a visit to Turkey to help us in typing some of the covering despatches transmitting trade- reports. It was at a time when Lord Crewe, owing to the illness of Sir Edward Grey, was in temporary charge of the Foreign Office. Before taking up for the Ambassador's signature the covering despatches which this useful M.P. had typed for us, I took the precaution of scrutinising them with care ; we had already received from the Foreign Office complaints regarding the neatness and quality of our typing. These " coverers," as I glanced at them, seemed to me to be masterpieces of the typist's art. But three weeks later they were sent back to us by the Foreign Office with an angry note saying that such slap-dash typing could not be allowed to remain in the archives. I examined them anew. I then discovered that all four of them began with the gay but unfortunate words " My Dori." No, it cannot be said that as clerical assistants we in those days were so very clerical. * * * *
Gradually as the years passed it was realised that professional typists were preferable to amateurs. Even in the missions abroad expert clerical assistants came to be engaged. But they were picked up ad hoc, they were not part of any regular branch or department, they were often angry and sometimes unreliable, and they possessed no security of tenure or prospect of success. This unhealthy system is now to be replaced by Branch B. It represents a major improve- ment. But it represents more than that. It should convince people that our new Foreign Service is determined to become stream-lined ; that the young men and women who will now enter the Senior Branch will not have to devote their time and energies to functions which can more deftly be performed by experts ; and that our Foreign Service is not merely to be opened to all available talent of whatever origin, but that it will be equipped and staffed with some sensible realisation of the proper distribution of functions.
Previous page
