The changes in the foreign service announced this week are
entirely such as could be desired. Sir Oliver Harvey is an almost self- designated successor to Mr. Duff Cooper in Paris, so completely is he equipped by personality and experience to fill what is, next to Washington, the highest of all Ambassadorial posts. He knows France, he knows Mr. Bevin, he has sure judgement and high ideals, and is better qualified than anyone else who could be named to interpret Whitehall and the Quai d'Orsay to each other faithfully and harmoniously. It is extremely satisfactory that just as Sir Oliver leaves the Foreign Office, Sir William Strang returns to it, for though, in succeeding Sir Gilmour Jenkins as head of the Control Commission for Germany, he may be more at Norfolk House than at Downing Street he will, no doubt, be the Foreign Minister's chief adviser on German affairs, with which his term of office as Political Adviser to the Commander-in-Chief in the British Zone has made him so intimately familiar. To revert to Mr. Duff Cooper, he has, by general consent, done admirable work in Paris in an . almost incomparably difficult period. If the Labour Government had not thought so it would have made a change long since.
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