The Lighter Side of Diplomatic

Life

•

On the Edge of Diplomacy. Rambles and Reflections, 1902. 1928. By J. D. Gregory, C.B., C.M.G. (Hutchinson. 2 GONE are the days when diplomacy was considered outside Certain ranks of society as an occult art, when the civil servants of the Foreign Office were looked upon as luminaries of another firmament—and did their best to live up to this reputation, As if to clinch the matter, Mr. Gregory, who was until recently Assistant Under-Secretary, comes out with a popular and highly entertaining account of the experiences of twenty-five . The, present volume is in -a 'double sense valedictory ; not simply because it covers the period of transition ushered in by the War, but also because Mr. Gregory, though welcoming the transformation, especially the new and constant contact with the Press, has himself evidently drunk deep of the spring of Foreign Office tradition.

When we are told that this book was " written without notes and at random on a foreign travel, between intervals of washing a car and exploring picture galleries," we know what standards to apply. By those standards it is unquestion- ably a success. And lest our elders be shocked or alarmed at such frivolity, we hasten to assure them that Mr. Gregory is the soul of discretion, that " no windows are broken," on the contrary, some welcome light is shed on personalities like Sir Eyre Crowe and Lord Curzon, on the whole mental atmosphere of the Foreign Officer and last but by no means least on Anglo-Russian relations. What a rare pleasure it is, too, in these days of accelerated change to find someone exclaiming with evident 'conviction : " Tradition is the most effective, the most exhilarating thing on earth ! "

Of one feature hi the daily life he justly complains, namely, the lack' of personal interest displayed by the august political personages who succeed one another as Foreign Secretaries. One might excuse them on the plea of overwork, were it not that the gulf between the Chief and his subordinates is syntpto-

Matie of a graver evil • •

" Not only does the influence of the Department in matters of first-rate importance seem to bo declining, but its personal relationship to any Parliamentary potentate . . . is tending to degenerate from submission into subservience. In- the end it will depress the diplomatic currency."

And if the well-meaning but dangerous Labour reformers get busy with their scheme for installing a Political personage at headquarters as the virtual Permanent Under-Secretary, says Mr. Gregory, God help the service I Mr. Gregory cannot often have been depressed himself. He seems to have extracted humour from all occasions, from feckless pre-War Vienna with its interminable procession of nobility, with its continuous dancing and its marriage market, " Everywhere reigned incalculable, incompetent and thought- less good will and good manners, but no soul " ; from pic- turesque Rumania, " where romance has a tendency to degenerate into opera bouffe, good bricks into stucco and marriage and divorce into a game of blind man's buff " ; from unfruitful propaganda missions into the Balkans and to the Holy See during the War, and, above all, from his post-War experiences in the Northern Department of the Foreign Office.

The development of interviews between the diplomatic staff of the Foreign Office and the outside world is, as he says, a great step in advance. But it also has its drawbacks or at least its unrehearsed humours. Mr. Gregory tells us of a visit in 1919 from the Prime Minister of Iceland ; with him an interpreter -who at once gave greetings in an entirely correct speech in En&ish

" from which I naturally inferred that ho had a complete mastery of our tongue ; and in consequence I motioned them both to chain. But there than ensued a total silence which various enquiries from myself entirely failed to break : the introductory sentence of greetings had been the limit of their knowledge of our language and had been carefully prepared beforehand. I noticed, however, that they both looked anxiously and lovingly at my coal-scuttle and continued to look at my coal-scuttle. It was only at last after excursions into bits of many strange languages that I hit on the solution. They had come to try and buy coal for their country, and the real authority whom they were attempting to interview was the Coal Controller."

A similar difficulty resulted from the visit of a deputation of Aaland Islanders who came to London to argue their case a month or so before the settlement of the:dispute at Geneva. On this occasion the spokesman, brushing aside his Swedish interpreter, plunged into a long; loud and impassioned harangue which lasted the best part of an hour. When the Swede was about to translate into a language equally' 'unintelligible to Mr. Gregory

" all of a sudden there was a loud detonation through the room. The chair on which the Swedish interpreter was sitting had collapsed, and that unfortunate and unnecessary gentleman had crashed on to the hard floor."

. As he was genuinely damaged, the interview came to an abrupt end.

The second half of the book contains some good sound sense but no " revelations," not even with regard to the Zinovieff letter, which Mr. Gregory treats as a huge joke, whether authentic or false. And it is worth reading for its variations on the theme of Bolshevism alone. He shows that neutrality vis a pis the new Russia was the only reason- able course our diplomacy could pursue, even if until the liquidation of the War when we were still ranged by force of circumstances against the Germans, and their potential allies, the Bolsheviks, it could hardly be a benevolent neutrality. Not only that, non-interference must neces- sarily be based on expediency rather than on principle, owing to the peculiar nature of Soviet Russia. He admits that Bolshevisni defies definition, though Bukharin tells us that its object is to destroy once and for 'all the " soul-encumbered " individual man of our ancient Civilization and to substitute in his place an entirely new kind of being which' is defined as " a coagulated mass as it were, of compressed and tightly interwoven social influences " ; but at any rate it is something indigenous to Russia, and "the gulf between extreme Socialism and Bolshevism is fundamental."

" Not only does Bolshevism as revealed in practice become a complete -perversion of the basic idea of Socialism, but, in its virtually mystic garb, it has gone right away beyond collectivism into. sphere totally .outside it. It has simply become a jumble of al the oldest religious heresies and the latest material develop- ments 'of history; and in trying to outdo American monumental buildings by constructing them like gigantic thermos flasks,- even in hoping some day to rearrange. nature -by altering the .position of mountains and rivers, and at the same time in ' socializing ' the soul and its emotions, it is simply doing its best to create for the edification of the world the collective lunatic."

Nevertheless, as the author says, with all the obstacles to dealing with such a State, world peace is a chimaera, unless Russia is included in diplomatic relations, and we must pin our faith to the groWing generation, even though it is " educated in a 'religious and moral vacuum, and therefore presumably its outlook will be nebulous, if not entirely chaotic." And evidently Mr. Gregory's relations with individual Bolsheviks like Krassin, Rakovsky, and Klishkci were of the.best., so that he says :

" there have been times when I would willingly have burned Bolsheviks at the stake ; but I would rather have burned those

whom nofseen than those whom I had." - • We agree with him entirely in deploring that " Russia " should have ever become a party question iii thil country, and that this' is probably the main reason for the unhappy course of Anglo-Russian relations.

Thirty-six illustrations, including two excellent photographs of the late and the present Pope, complete a characteristic

1929 book. W. H. C.