Warlords of Tang
“Actually, Lydia,” said LDC Liebnitz one day to the lady of his life, “Jimmy the Turk isn’t as bad as they come. If you want really obscure reports, you should see the ones his grandfather Hamish wrote and my father had to…
The Power Game — How Washington Works
Shortly before leaving office, Harry Truman made a famous remark about his successor, Dwight Eisenhower: “He’ll sit right here and he’ll say, ‘Do this. Do that!’ And nothing will happen. Poor Ike — it won’t be a bit like the Army. He’ll…
Radical Mandarin: The Memoirs of Escott Reid
The Canadian “mandarins,” that remarkable group of public servants who came to prominence in the 1940s, have greatly enriched Canadian historiography and public debate since the 1970s. I suppose no-one has counted the number of books, articles, lectures, and essays that External…
A Visual History of Modern Canadian Business — Guts, Greed and Glory
In 1921, the readers of the Sunday Express in England were treated to a panegyric on the virtues of capitalism by the newspaper’s bumptious millionaire publisher, Canadian-born Lord Beaverbrook. Having cut his capitalist teeth as an itinerant bond salesman in the Maritimes…
Marler: Four Generations of a Quebec Family
Sir Herbert Marler is chiefly remembered in the foreign service community for certain foibles of personality and as the inspiration and financial backer of the remarkable property that still serves as the Canadian Embassy residence and chancery in Tokyo. Insights into both…
Undiplomatic Notes: Tales from the Canadian Foreign Service
When Sid Freifeld was active in The Department he was well-known and universally liked as a person who took on whatever was asked of him. That included opening a Press Office in spite of a management that really didn’t want us to…
Si j’avais écouté mon père …ou ma mère!
Si j’avais écouté mon père, je serais devenue
Media Diplomacy or Pin-striped Television —
A debate is raging furiously between a number of diplomatic historians and TV critics. Has the Gulf crisis changed the nature of diplomacy through the use of television?
Wot, me worry!
bout de papier, Vol. 8, No. 2 (1991) — Spring 1991 // Printemps 1991, p. 35 Terry Jones The conversation beside me was very intense.Sipping their cafeteria-swill coffeevoices low, leaning forward, brows furrowedthey talked of increasing tension, worry, stress.“Do you feel it too?” I heard one ask.God yes! I wanted to shout, I worry:will my […]
The West to the Rescue
bout de papier, Vol. 8, No. 2 (1991) — Spring 1991 // Printemps 1991, p. 35 On May 16, 1990, the President of Lithuania, Vytautus Landsbergus, said:“The west never promised us anything… We could only think that everything theWest has said had some foundation: that the principles and faith in humanity,democracy, people and nations’ rights […]
