bout de papier, Vol. 7, No. 2 (1989), p. 4
Your readers might enjoy this postscript to Sidney Freifeld’s excellent article on “The Poets of External” in the most recent issue of bout de papier.
While examining an old file in our Embassy in Dublin in the course of my posting there, I came across a letter to Alfred Rive confirming that Stuart Hemsley had won the prize. It went on to add that honourable mention should perhaps have gone to an outsider — “Joe” Garner who then (or perhaps later — my memory fails me) was British High Commissioner in Ottawa.
He submitted the following gem: “Away with cocked hats, plumes and swords In proof of high endeavour, We’ll wear where Adam wore the fig The Maple Leaf forever!”
I must confess that I used this bit of doggerel in later years without proper attribution to illustrate that not all diplomats were as colourless as critics often assert.
James J. McCardle
Dear Editor,
Re: Howard Green
With the death of one of our very special Ministers (to whom Blair Fraser referred once as “The Lone Pine of Parliament Hill”), your readers may be interested to know that I managed to have a brief word with Mr. Green on the telephone on my way through Vancouver in mid-May. When I eventually made myself heard, I told him how much we all missed him from Ottawa these days. He replied that he still had good memories of his friends in External Affairs.
He was a good Minister who left his imprint on many issues and policies and on the personnel of the Department.
Congratulations again on your excellent product. Keep up the good work.
A.E. Ritchie
Dear Editor,
Those of us who have been retired for half-a-dozen years or so are perhaps not the best placed to comment on William Warden’s article: “Reflections on Leaving the Foreign Service,” but I must confess that it vibrated many sympathetic chords in my own memory. Mr. Warden’s strictures against the self-serving nature of recent departmental senior management derive added force from his own record of service. That record speaks for itself and it does not permit anyone to dismiss his article as being sour grapes from a failure.
However, I do not totally agree with Mr. Warden. For the foreign service’s current morale problems I would lay greater emphasis than he does on the heavy-handed political interference in departmental administration of the past 15 years — particularly in the wholesale appointment of non-career heads of mission. Yet in the main, I thought his argument was highly convincing.
This is not a new story. As a member of the “Class of ’45” I frequently experienced much the same feelings about senior management as did Mr. Warden later on. Even in those years, there was a tendency for the departmental hierarchy to be composed of people who had rotated among the larger posts — London, Paris, Washington, etc. — and who thus lacked first-hand experience of the heavy problems of administration of a small post in a third world country.
There never were, in my opinion, enough people on Killers’ Row (as we then called it) with first-hand experience of Asia or Africa. And, too often, they tended to be something of a self-perpetuating clique, as their natural inclination was to promote and select promising people whom they had known and admired in these large posts where they had served. This process seemed to me to continue throughout the 38 year period of my service (1945-1983) — to the detriment of morale among the majority of personnel serving in our small posts abroad.
Like Mr. Warden, I left with no encumbrance of personal bitterness. Indeed I was generally well-treated and in fact stayed on eight months beyond the (then) normal retirement date of the 65th birthday.
However, I believed then, and I continue to believe, that the system would be improved if, in selecting senior departmental management, much greater emphasis were placed on choosing those with years of firsthand experience in Asia, Africa and Latin America, preferably including the management of at least one hardship post.
Harry Carter
Dear Editor,
The transmission belt from France to Canada seems to have slipped when it brought to you the letter from my old friend Robert Ford that appeared in bout de papier Vol. 6, No. 4. The Russian for “peaceful coexistence” was printed as “MIRNOYE COSKSHESTVOVANYE”, whereas, using the same convention of trans-literation, it should have been “MIRNOYE SOSUSHCHESTVOVANYE”. Here is another good one to try out for size: “SAMOZASHCHISHCHAYUSH- CHEMU”: “self-defending” in the dative case, singular, masculine.
John A. McCordick
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Originally published in bout de papier, Vol. 7, No. 2 (1989), p. 4. Read the rest of this issue →
