MARGINAL COMMENT
By HAROLD NICOLSON
NVHEN I hear or read statements that the time has now come when we should carry out the " democratisa- tion " of the Foreign Service, I experience emotions of pain and irritation. Of all the horrible words that have arisen since the deal= of humanism, surely " democratisation " is among the most cumbrous. I should be the first to agree that the ideal diplomatist ought to be representative of the governing classes in his own country, and in intellectual and social harmony with the classes governing the country in which he is sent to serve. Such a marriage of true minds is not always easy to arrange. Before the first war, for instance, the representatives of Republican France were at an obvious disadvantage in coping with the esoteric court prejudices that obtained in St. Petersburg or even Vienna. Our own patricians, although fully representing the Conservative or Liberal oligarchy, were not viewed with any easy matiness by the journalists of Washington or Chicago. And if we were now to send to Moscow diplomatists of the true Trades Union type, the sensitive plants of the Politburo would recoil from them as hurtful emissaries of the most revolting of all Menshevik systems. Yet although complete harmony between those who send and those who receive is in this varied world difficult of attainment, it is obviously necessary that an envoy should possess the confidence of his own Government and be in a position to command the confidence of the Government to which he is accredited. This must from time to time entail adjustment of the social grades from which our diplomatists are recruited. I am all in favour of that. What irritates me is that nobody even today realises that this adjustment was carried out by Mr. Eden many years ago. The mass of the British Press and public are still under the impression that the members of our Foreign Service are born rather than made. A similar legend impedes the valuable work accomplished by the solemn officials of the State Department in Washington. They are dismissed as "cookie-pushers "—an odd little expression signifiying men who attend tea-parties. * * * * Although I warmly welcome, and have indeed always advo- cated, the fusion of the fOrmer Diplomatic Service with the former Consular and Commercial Services although I have for the last forty years been convinced that the class from which entrants were recruited should cease to be in any way limited, and that the State-school boys should start to flow in ; although I applauded the Eden reforms when they were first announced ; although I can claim to have been one of the earliest champions of the principle of "democratisation "—and even as I type that word, I am assailed by nausea ; although I cannot be accused of any reactionary spirit in this connection ; yet I admit that there are moments when a certain sadness afflicts me when I think of what has had to be sacrificed. In the old days the Diplomatic Service was a tiny profession, as close as any regiment ; we were personally, often intimately, acquainted with 80 per cent. of our colleagues, and we knew from hearsay everything about those of them whom we had not met. To the outside world we may have represented a trim and uniform appearance like a herd of fallow deer ; we ourselves appreciated the infinite variety of our colleagues ; their many eccentricities were known and respected ; no secrets were hidden since no secrets were probed. We were the bloom upon. the fruit of English oligarchy: and when oligarchy decayed the bloom was lost.
• One of the most typical of this old school of diplomatists was Sir George Clerk, who died last week at the age of seventy-six.' To the outside observer he seemed both the prototype and the finished product of the stage diplomatist. Tall, elegant and what I believe is called "well groomed," he was impervious to any disturbance ; he would have mounted the scaffold with the same imperturbability as he mounted the steps of the Turf Club, his spats and monocle shining in the summer air. When he indulged in sport—and he was a passionate fisherman—his clothing and accoutrement struck awe in the hearts of Ethiopian coolies and filled those foreigners who accompanied him with aching shame. He was one of the tidiest men that I have ever known. Although I, at least in my earlier years, strove hard to ape the elegance of my superiors, although I submitted to the fussiness of the most noted tailors and hosiers, the result was unconvincing ; Savile Row with me ended always as a rag bag ; -but George Clerk could purchase an overcoat in the general store at Bratislava. and in an instant that overcoat would assume the lovely lines of Ascot. In his work also he was meticulously neat. His pens, his inkstand, his blotting-paper were not as the writing materials of lesser men ; they glistened, they never got out of order, they looked always as if they belonged to the spare bedroom on the eve of the visit of an exacting guest. His handwriting was clear. manly and beautifully spaced. His handkerchief, with great dexterity, remained always neatly folded in his breast pocket. What was so terrifying for his juniors was that he much disliked in others any untidiness of demeanour or of thought.
This was formidable. But what endeared George Clerk to his many friends was that he was much amused by himself. When in 1914 he was appointed head of the War Department in the Foreign Office, we his juniors regarded him with admiring appre- hension—at least until the November evening in that year when. he came into the back room and made a public confession of his great sin. From that moment our fear of him was replaced by affection. He explained to us that shortly after he had become a member of the Service in 1898 he had been appointed Resident Clerk, and that when thus employed he had committed a gross dereliction of duty. His crime had remained undetected, but he had sworn to himself that on reaching his fortieth birthday he would make a public confession ; the anniversary had now arrived and we were to be his public. The Resident Clerks in those days lived on the top floor of the Foreign Office, where they were allotted two robins and a fine view of the park. In return for this accommodation they were obliged at regular intervals to do'a week "on duty," which meant they had to decypher urgent telegrams arriving during the night. It was at the height of the Fashoda crisis, and George Clerk, although on duty that week, had committed the imprudence of dining out, going to a theatre and thereafter attending a dance. On his return at 3.0 a.m. there was an urgent telegram waiting for him from the Consul at Brest which in his agitation Clerk decyphered as "French Fleet has left the harbour." Grasping the telegram in shaking hands, George Clerk dashed round to Arlington Street and roused the aged Lord Salisbury from his bed. The Prime Minister read the tele- gram. "We can deal with this later" was all he said.
On returning to the Foreign Office, Clerk found another urgent telegram awaiting him. It was from the -British Ambassador in Paris, who reported that he had just received an assurance from the French Government that the French Fleet would remain at Brest pending the issue of the negotiations. Clerk then took up the figures of the earlier telegram and decyphered them again, just to make sure. He found that in an excess of zeal he had omitted the word " not " between the words "French Fleet has" and the words" left the harbour." lie took the original telegram and burnt it in his grate. Sixteen years later, on his fortieth birthday, he confessed this sin to us in the third room of the War Department while the guns over there thundered around Ypres. We were heartened by this concession. If this master of precision could commit so enormous a sin and still survive, then there was hope for us and our own mild mistakes. We thanked George Clerk for telling us his story.
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