bout de papier, Vol. 9, No. 1 (1992) — Winter 1992 // Hiver 1992, pp. 27–28
Broadview Press, Peterborough, 1991,
322 pages, $27.95. (See ad pg. 41.)
A history professor at Royal Roads Military College in Victoria, B.C., Gordon Martel has combed nearly three hundred diplomatic memoirs for anecdotes illustrative of the life and work of Foreign Service officers abroad over the past century. Six excerpts from this collection have been selected by Arthur Menzies, Member of the Senior Board.
The Exchange Rate on Swiss Francs
Canadian Louis Rasminsky had remarkably little difficulty in winning a post on the League of Nations staff in 1930, when Rasminsky was only 22. He later attributed this early success to his “sheer effrontery” in applying. His mind, however, was not entirely on the new job. As Rasminsky tells it, he immediately sent a telegram to Lyla Rotenberg in Toronto: “Have accepted job League of Nations at 13,700 Swiss francs. Will you marry me?” The reply was swift: “What is exchange rate on Swiss francs?”
According to all reports the marriage was long, happy, and filled with a sense of humour. In later years the Rasminskys became distinguished among civil servant families for tooting about drab Ottawa in a red convertible — but by that time Rasminsky was Deputy Governor of the Bank of Canada.
Source: J.L. Granatstein, “The Ottawa Men: The Civil Service Mandarins”, 1935-57.
A Diplomatic Walkout
An interesting variation on this theme occurred at the San Francisco conference to establish the United Nations. Not surprisingly, the diplomatic jousting between the United States and the Soviets was intense, with particularly bitter quarrels arising over procedures.
At one juncture, when the British delegate was making a statement immediately after the Soviet delegate, Gromyko, had been overruled by the Chairman, Gromyko rose from his seat, looked around, and proceeded to walk up the centre aisle of the auditorium. He was soon followed by all the other delegates representing communist states, including one lady delegate from Czechoslovakia. Photographers began snapping pictures of the walkout, the television cameras began to roll, the other delegates stood up to watch the procession. The British delegate, although he could not be heard above the din created by the movement, continued to speak.
Gromyko eventually reached the end of the aisle, turned, and disappeared into the gentlemen’s restroom; the male delegates from the communist states followed him in, but the lady was left on her own. Reporters raced for telephones to transmit the news; the British delegate ceased his address.
After some time, Gromyko re-emerged and proceeded down the aisle to his seat, with his sympathetic colleagues following in his wake, including the lady who, by this time, was blushing at the applause coming from the galleries.
Source: Dean Acheson, “Present at the Creation: My Years in the State Department”
Is Charlie There?
As Prime Minister, John Diefenbaker had liked to keep the Red Phone displayed prominently to impress visitors. His successor preferred to set a different tone; Lester ’Mike’ Pearson hid the “hotline” to the President of the United States from view when elected to office in 1963. A little more than a year later he could no longer remember where it was so when it rang one afternoon during a consultation with External Affairs Minister Paul Martin, Pearson could not locate the phone.
“My God, Mike, don’t you realize this could mean war?” Martin exclaimed as they scrambled frantically around the room.
Pearson’s reply was entirely calm, “ They can’t start a war if we don’t answer the phone.”
The phone was finally located and when the Prime Minister answered, he heard a voice asking “Is Charlie there?” The caller was informed he had the wrong number.
Source: Peter C. Newman, “The Distemper of Our Times”.
A Diplomatic Mouthful
One American Consul in Greece, George Horton, recalled how a particularly overwhelming and pompous European diplomat finished each meal by taking a mouthful of water from the finger-bowl, rinsing his teeth, and then spitting the water back into the bowl. But this curious procedure seemed quite restrained when compared with the Secretary of a Legation who later dined with Horton. The American Consul happened to mention, during the course of the meal, that he needed to have some dental work done, and that he was encountering some difficulty in finding a reputable dentist. His dinner companion immediately snapped a dental plate, which contained three or four teeth, out of his mouth, rinsed it in a finger-bowl, dried it on his napkin and placed it in front of the startled Horton.
“I had that done here,” he explained. “It would be hard to find better work than that.” Seeing that Horton was more than slightly taken aback, he exclaimed: “Pick it up, it won’t bite you!”
Source: George Horton, “Recollections Grave and Gay: The Story of Mediterranean Consul”
Stopping Leaks
Henry Kissinger tells the story of the advice he got from the outgoing President, Lyndon Johnson, on how to stop leaks….
“I have one piece of advice to give you, Professor,” the President said — and here Kissinger leaned forward to profit from the advice of a man who had been engaged in the public service for decades — “read the columnists … and if they call a member of your staff thoughtful, dedicated, or any other friendly adjective, fire him immediately. He is your leaker.”
Source: Henry Kissinger, “White House Years”
Precious Stones
The eccentricities of Mackenzie King, Prime Minister of Canada for some twenty years, are well-known: … [he] constructed over the course of several years an artificial ruin at his Kingsmere estate, collecting the raw materials from a variety of sources.
His oddity emerged in dealing with his diplomatic corps in the darkest days of the war in 1940. On the day after Westminster Hall had been bombed, a telegram marked ’Secret and Most Immediate’ was received at Canada House in London. The telegram from the Prime Minister requested that, as a matter of the highest priority, a few stones from the rubble of Westminster be dispatched to him personally. It fell to future Prime Minister ’Mike’ Pearson, then a diplomat at Canada House, to arrange for the shipment. Remarkably, the Office of Works complied with the request promptly and, as Pearson puts it in his Memoirs, “this historic and heavy freight was shipped safely through submarines to add a new distinction to Mr. King’s ruins at Kingsmere.”
Source: Lester B. Pearson, “Mike: The Memoirs of the Rt. Honourable Lester B. Pearson”
Dining in Style
The Council of Foreign Ministers met in Moscow in November 1948, and the meeting proved to be yet another disastrous affair in the early days of the Cold War. The British Foreign Secretary, Ernest Bevin, returned to London in a gloomy mood; he had hoped to create a workable Four-Power system or, at the very least — as a Labour Minister — to act as some sort of a bridge between East and West. Not long after the conference ended, a couple of his friends spotted him coming in to lunch in the dining room of the House of Commons and, seeing his apparent despair, joined him to see if they could cheer him up a bit.
One of them remarked that, although the conference might have been a failure, they must have had some nice things to eat and drink, especially in comparison with the limitations that diners still faced in London, where rationing was still in full force.
“No,” Bevin bitterly told them, “You see, I was at the embassy.” Of course, with rationing still in effect in the British Isles itself, the British embassy could hardly be seen to be providing a flow of champagne and caviar to its own people. The Foreign Secretary concurred with the principle of the policy, so he was in no position to complain. With a twinkle in his eye, Bevin surprisingly asked his companions, “Do you know Brindle?”
Brindle, it turned out, was the elderly Scottie dog that was the pet of the British Ambassador and his wife. How did Brindle come into the story of rationing in the British embassy?
“Well,” said Bevin, “it was like this. Towards the end of our little meal, they gave me, with the cheese, what I took to be dog biscuits…. By way of a joke, and quite unsuspecting, the Foreign Secretary said, he had turned to his hostess and asked, “Lady Peterson, these look to me like dog biscuits?”
“As a matter of fact they are, Secretary of State, but we like them.”
After a brief pause, Bevin responded. “Lady Peterson, I ’ope I’m not depriving Brindle of his dinner?”
“That’s quite all right, Secretary of State, Brindle won’t eat ’em.”
Source: Hubert M.G.B. Gladwyn, “The Memoirs of Lord Gladwyn”
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Originally published in bout de papier, Vol. 9, No. 1 (1992) — Winter 1992 // Hiver 1992, pp. 27–28. Read the rest of this issue →
