Slim Volume
By STRIX SEWELS are almost always disappointing. .1.3When 1 compare 640989 with 526239, or Indeed with any of the intervening editions of this indispensable publication, I am aware of a falling off. The format is the same; the frontis- piece, though slightly different, is as repellent as it was in 1925; and the slim volume is no slimmer. it still says on the flyleaf : 'This Passport con- tains 32 pages'; and it still adds, lest some clue- less Kalmuck cannot understand English : 'C'e Passe port contient 32 pages.' This, I suppose, is a precaution against the bearer either tearing out a compromising page (`The accused, m'lud, maintains that he was never in Siam. I have here . . .') or alternatively inserting a couple of extra ones covered with forged visas.
I note with approval that the practice of Printing Passport with a capital and passeport Without one is still adhered to. The nuance, a subtle one, is clearly intended to remind foreigners that my passport is a British official document, on which the French language, though employed for convenience and as a matter of condescension, has a subordinate status.
Of the various world-trends which reveal them- selves to a textual critic of successive editions the most striking is the decline of the personality- cult among British Foreign Secretaries. The first of these dignitaries to request-and-require-all- those-whom- it-may-concern - to-allow-the-bearer- to-pass - freely-without -let - or - hindrance-and - to afford -him - every-assistance-and -protection - of- which-he-may-stand-in-need began, 'We, George Nathaniel, Marquess Curzon of Kedleston, Earl of Kedleston, Viscount Scarsdale, Baron Ravens- dale, Knight of the Most Noble Order of the Garter, Knight Grand Commander, . . .' and so on, until the catalogue of his honours ended, on a note of petulant satiety, with 'etc. etc. etc.' Below the preamble appeared his coat of arms and a facsimile of his signature.
Seven years later Sir John Allsebrook Simon Was still addressing the foreigners in the first Person plural. His 'etc. etc. etc.' has a hint of ostentation, perhaps even of imposture, about it, but his coat of arms includes a bird which looks to me like a razorbill, thus adding an agreeable touch of Lewis Carroll to the document. What do we find when we turn to 640989? A drab anonymity. No signature, no heraldry. Merely, printed on a coloured background sug- gestive of a petrol coupon, 'Her Britannic Majesty's Principal Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs requests and requires. . . .' Anyone can see that we have come down in the world.
This is borne out by much other evidence. An American visa issued (without any nonsense about fingerprints) in 1929 bears the legend, 'Fee $10--=£2 ls. 8d.'; in those days there was no need for the last two pages to be devoted to the sordid and parsimonious particulars of 'Foreign Exchange for Travelling Expenses.' What has become of J. P. Thompson, Chief Commissioner, Delhi, who in 1931 with the aid of a single rubber stamp could blithely scrawl across one page, 'Also valid for Persia, Iraq, Syria, Turkey, Bulgaria, Yugo Slavia'? Where nowadays will you find a Sanders whose writ runs so far down the river?
Turn, for a sorry contrast, to 640989, the latest edition. No fewer than nine of its thirty-two pages are taken up by large purple visas issued by the Foreign Office and authorising me to enter the petty sheikdoms along the Trucial Coast. In the old days it was the foreigners whom we blamed for wasting the space in our passports with huge, blurred, meaningless stencils and gawdy stamps. 'We, George Nathaniel,' would never have needed nine pages of my passport to give me the run of Ras-al-Khaimal, Umm-al-Qaiwain and the rest of these obscure sand dunes (which, incident- ally, I never want to in the end).
All editions carry on the back page the state- ment that 'this passport is a valuable document.' Only the latest finds it necessary to add that it is 'the property of Her Majesty's Government and may be withdrawn at any time.' Here again we get a glimpse of a world-trend, a reminder that we have passed into an age where subversion, defection and treachery are contingencies which cannot be left out of account.
Thumbing through the 170 pages which span the thirty-two years between Lord Curzon's coat of arms and Mr. Selwyn Lloyd's petrol coupon, between the bun-faced boy of the first frontispiece and the cornered dope-fiend of the last, I am im- pressed by the prodigious and almost worldwide waste of effort for which my passport has been responsible. Hundreds of conscientious men have scrutinised it, stamped it and appended their signatures. Chinamen and Turks, Guatemalans and Poles and Britons have recorded its par- ticulars. Behind them, unseen, in the Oficina de Pasaportes or the Yamen of the Provincial Gov- ernment or the Immigration Office, clerks have filed these particulars; and behind the clerks dour boobies in the secret police have, in countries like Russia and Japan, made further annotations. Men have got up early in the morning or stayed up late at night in order to make hieroglyphic marks on the stiff little pages.
I myself, the bearer of this valuable document which does not belong to me, have spent hours standing in queues, bustling from consulate to consulate, waiting in anterooms, presenting cer- tificates of inoculation, filling up forms. In the pursuit of exotic visas I have blustered, pleaded, if necessary lied. So far from conferring im- munity from lets and hindrances, my passport has involved me in a wide variety of them.
Not a minute, not a second of time passes in which, all over the world, fretting travellers are not presenting their passports to bored officials. Never was so vast and cumbersome a net spread to catch so few aberrant fish; but all fish, how- ever lawful their occasions, have to go through it. The passport system must surely represent the purest, if not the biggest, diversion of effort which homo sapiens has imposed upon himself.
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