Sm,—I do not altogether agree with the proposals of my
colleague, Mr. Crossman, for the further reform of the Foreign" Service, and -many of Mr. Nicolson's observations in "Marginal Comment" seem to me to be just. But there is one serious flaw in the more recent history of the Diplomatic Service which is seldom discussed on these occasions. Writing from memory and without books of reference, I think it is the case that there have been at least five--and, if Lord Grey be included, six- non-cateer appointments to the Washington Embassy in the last forty
years, three to Paris and one each to Berlin, Moscow and Madrid. None of these was made, I think, by Labour Governments and it is pertinent to ask why, in fact,•they were made. Was there really such a lack of professionals qualified for the highest appointments as this would suggest? Or was the Service too little articulated to resist the pressure on it? Mr. Nicolson might perhaps employ an idle half-hour on conjuring up the expression verbal and facial of the Board of Admiralty or the Army Council if it was suggested to them that at a critical juncture the command of the Mediterranean fleet or Of an army in the field or at Aldershot should be handed over to a university professor or a more or less successful financier. May we yet find a Prime Minister so tigerish as to be able to dare even those!
It does not meet the case to say that these appointments were due to the fact that the older generation of diplomatists Were Uninterested in economies. For in fact most of them Were made primarily for political reasons. It is just this fact which is rather disturbing. For we are dealing with what is fundamentally a political- Service. Diplomacy is one of the three main forms in which the art Of *talcs (cc the science if you will) can be practised in the modern world. The question we now have to ask ourselves is whether the new reforms, either those,‘ embodied in the recent Act hi " those ' adunibrated from the Left of the -.Labour Party, will in fact ensure the entrance to the Ser- vice of men of real political aptitude and their adequate training after they get there. Since Mr. Nicolson regards scepticism as a virtue, perhaps he will look on me with the greater charity if I say that I am not satisfied, either that the giving of a greater opportunity to vice- Consuls to become Ambassadors or of closing the door more narrowly to Eton and Winchester and opening it more widely to, say, Manchester Grammar School and Ranlish, or even having compulsory courses at the London School of Economics, will in thennelves go very far towards solving this problem.—Yours faithfully, JOHN MARTIN. House of Commons.
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