28 June 1945.
Back in Ottawa the Conference is over. It is going to be a little disconcerting at first living alone again after our group existence in San Francisco. The hotel sitting-room which Norman Robertson and Hume Wrong shared was a meeting place for members of our delegation and there was a perpetual flow of drinks on tap. There we foregathered to talk Conference gossip. The pace of the Conference got more and more hectic towards the end. Meetings would end at 4 or 5 a.m., when we would fall into bed and drag ourselves up three or four hours later. It also became increasingly difficult to relate the Conference to other events going on in the world and form an estimate of the real importance in the scheme of things of what we were doing at San Francisco. While we were there the war against Germany was won, the occupation of Germany took place, the Russians installed themselves in Prague and in Vienna and made their first bid for a port on the Adriatic and bases in the Straits. We were preoccupied with the Battle of the Veto and with the tussles over the powers of the General Assembly and the provisions for amending the Charter. How much were these mere paper battles? How much was the San Francisco Conference a smokescreen behind which the Great Powers took up their positions? These doubts were floating about in the backs of our minds but we had not much time for doubts – the daily timetable was too gruelling.
At any rate, if the Conference was a gigantic bluff, it bluffed the participants – at least some of them.
The final public sessions were decidedly too good to be true. The Opera House was packed with pleased, excited, well-fed people. There was a feeling of a gala performance. On the floodlit stage ranged in front of the flags of the United Nations were standing hand-picked specimens of each branch of the United States Armed Forces – very pretty girls from the Women’s Forces made up for the floodlighting and wore very becoming uniforms – soldiers and sailors preserving even on this occasion an air of loose-limbed sloppiness.
One after another the speakers mounted the rostrum and addressed us – most of them in their native languages. The text of the speeches in English had been circulated to the audience, but this was hardly necessary as we knew what they would say, and they all said it – in Chinese, Arabic, French, and Russian we were told that mankind was embarking on another effort to organize the world so that peace should reign. We were told that the success of the Conference showed that this ideal could be attained if unity was preserved – that we owed it to the living and to the dead to devote all our efforts to this end. Almost all the speeches worked in a reference to the inspiring example of Franklin D. Roosevelt and a flowery tribute to Stettinius (rather wasted as he resigned next day).
It all went off very well – there was really nothing to complain of – no outrageous bit of vulgarity or juke-box sentimentality. Even that great ape, Stettinius, was rather subdued and contented himself with grinning and signalling to his acquaintances in the audience during the playing of the United States National Anthem. The speakers were dignified and sincere – Halifax, Wellington Koo, Smuts, Paul-Boncour – all spoke out of long experience and were impressive. True, they said nothing, but this seemed an occasion when nothing was better than too much. President Truman made a sensible, undistinguished speech – just too long. (He looks like a sparrowy, little, old, small-town, American housewife who could shut the door very firmly in the face of the travelling salesmen and tramps.) He got the biggest hand from the audience and after him Halifax. They fell completely for Halifax’s gilt-edged “niceness.” What with tributes to the Great Deceased and bouquets to each other and commendatory remarks on the good work accomplished, the whole thing reminded one of speech day at school. In front of me the Argentine Ambassador and his pretty daughter applauded with polite enthusiasm. There were only two cracks in the surface – one was when Masaryk, the Czech Foreign Minister, said at the close of his speech, “Let us for God’s sake hear less talk of the next world war.” And the other (for me at least) was when Stettinius asked us to stand “in silent memory of the dead in this war whose sacrifice had made this Conference possible.” I suppose it had to be said – it sounded as if we were thanking Lady Bountiful for lending her garden “without which this bazaar would not have been possible.” As a matter of fact I did think of some of the dead – of Victor Gordon-Ives, who wanted to go on living and to enjoy country-house culture, collect beautiful things, and make jokes with his friends – of John Rowley and Gavin Rainnie and the other Canadians whose prompt reaction would have been “Balls to you, brother!” Still, I suppose it had to be said, but not by Stettinius in the San Francisco Opera House on a gala evening to the polite applause of the Argentine Ambassador.
5 July 1945. Halifax, Nova Scotia.
Back in my own country among my own people – how different from the easy-going superficial Californians. The surface layer here as everywhere is Americanization – the climate that extends over the whole of this continent – the whole Anglo-Saxon world – babbitry – but here it is a peculiar brand of babbitry without optimism, and it is not deep. Underneath is a queer compound of philosophical pessimism, of rooted old prejudice, of practical kindliness to the neighbour and the unfortunate, of unkindness towards the prosperous, something which has been ironed out in the prosperous fat lands of Upper Canada but which still grows on this rocky soil.
For me, Halifax is full of what Elizabeth calls “mined areas.” As I am walking in its streets I am suddenly assailed by memories coming out of a past which is so far away as to be almost meaningless – a street smell, the sharp angle of a tall roof, the cracked, dark red paint on the shingle of a wall – they send me signals that I cannot read. I walk the sunny streets under the trees – everything registers, reminds, torments with hidden hints, sly remembrances, elusive little airs of memories. I am easily bewildered and tired here – it is too much to fit together, and while I observe the changes, the disappearance of shops and houses, there surges a tide laden with old scraps – empty fruit husks, an uneasy wave that goes to and fro, the sensation of change, of time of change – comes so close that it is stifling.
7 July 1945.
Went to lunch at the Halifax Club. An old man sitting in his armchair said, “When I get the fish smell coming up from the wharves and the oil smell blown across the harbour from Dartmouth and the smell of the nearby brothels, I ask myself whether I live in a very savoury neighbourhood.” The brothels are usually ancient houses in Hollis and Water Streets solidly built in the late eighteenth century, once the homes of merchants, now encrusted with filth, infested with bedbugs and snotty-nosed brats. Little girls of twelve and thirteen are already in the business, with painted faces and gyrating bottoms – they walk the streets in twos and threes giving a giggle for a leer. This part of Halifax is the old port-town shortly to be swept away. It is not far from Hogarth’s Gin Alley. In the midst of these smells of fish, wharf, and brothel lives my maiden cousin, Susie, in the last of the old houses to keep its character. On its outer wall is a mildewed brass plate with “A” engraved in flowery longhand upon it. The glass panel in the door is protected by a fortification of twisted wire-work to prevent drunken lascars from breaking in. This is a last outpost of gentility. It has an obdurate defender. Susie’s face is the colour of a yellowing letter left in a desk. Her manner is gentle, her obstinacy does not appear on the surface. She would be a happy martyr for her obsessions – she loves resistance – she is the woman every underground movement is looking for. Thumbscrews would avail her enemies nothing – and she sees her enemies everywhere – the Catholic Church, the American Nation, Modern Commercialism – she tilts at all of them. As for the squalor around her, it shall be kept at bay. It is provided in her will that this old house is to be destroyed at her death. Meanwhile she writes in her childish hand long rigmaroles of family gossip to cousins in England or in Bermuda. She sits under the Copley portrait of the loyalist great-great-great-great-grandfather Byles. (Although practically penniless she refused to sell it to the Boston Art Gallery for $20,000 lest it should fall into
the hands of the Americans.) She looks out between the yellow lace curtains at the life of Gin Alley and knows herself as strong as the drunken bullies or the hardened tarts.
8 July 1945. Wolfville, Nova Scotia.
This time it is different being in Wolfville. Perhaps I have been too keyed up and cannot relax, or else I am too well, and this place is only ideal for invalids and the old. The weather has been close and airless with low, suffocating, grey skies. There is to be an eclipse of the sun tomorrow and people say this queer weather has something to do with it.
I miss Elizabeth more and more. When I am working I banish her from my conscious mind by thinking of something that has to be thought of first because it must be tackled at once, so I manage to keep her image at arm’s length, but now that I am idle thoughts of her besiege me.
The main street of Wolfville which before seemed so idyllic has lost its charm – in fact it is stifling to me. So many old women spying at the passer-by from behind their muslin curtains – the tight, taut atmosphere of a small town waiting for an event, a scandal, a false step, anything around which to circle and scream like hungry sea-gulls. It makes me feel absurdly sulky, restless and adolescent, yet the people are very kind. It is just that the place gives me a mild attack of the disease of my youth – claustrophobia.
I wonder if the returned soldiers suffer from this disease. I saw two of them today sitting somewhat disconsolately in their hot uniforms on a park bench. What do they make of the home town after months of waiting and fear and exhilaration, after the wild welcoming crowds in the Brussels streets, after the years of their youth in Sussex towns and villages?
9 July 1945.
This is the season for the smells of cut hay and the sweetness of clover – the wild roses are out everywhere. I rush out of this house on a sudden walk streaking along Main Street past the neat white houses with their little lawns and pergolas and right up the hill among the orchards. From there you look down over the dike lands to Minas Basin.
Mother and I spend a good deal of our time with the Sherwoods who are as much a local product as the apples they grow in their own orchards. Gertie is earthy Nova Scotian – she can hardly open her mouth without some localism popping out. “Some person told me” is the beginning of half her gossip, and “Small town – small talk” she says of her own conversation. She notices that the clergyman is wearing a silk surplice instead of a linen one and does not believe that it is because of any wartime shortage of linen – no – it is because his wife thinks silk looks grander. She says of the bank manager’s wife, “She calls on everyone, she is the sort of woman who never gets offended.” (This is a devastating comment, as in her view people with proper pride are always in a state of “being offended” with some of their neighbours.)
11 July 1945.
Main Street of Wolfville. The brownstone of the Post Office, the greens and reds of the municipal geranium beds. The street itself is still and dusty in the sun – awnings are down over the closed shops. It is Wednesday afternoon – early-closing day – an occasional car passes driven at a sleepy tempo or carts and horses moving at a walking pace. Twos and threes of small boys in overalls with bare feet scour the sidewalks in desultory search for sensation. Men in shirtsleeves sit on the doorsteps – a woman in a white and mauve polka-dot dress passes with a basket of strawberries under her arm. The pulse of the small town beats slowly, rhythmically, steadily – a sense of summer contentment fills the streets.
15 July 1945.
The summer perfection of Wolfville is too much for me – there are too many smells – the rich smell of clover and the juicy, verdant, almost sexy smell of the new-cut grass in the fields behind the house, the wild roses and arbutus, the poppies and the peonies. There are breezes all day long – nothing seems to stand still for a moment – the grass, trees, and flowers shiver and skimmer in the wind and sun. I get hay fever from the smells. My eyes ache from the brilliance of summer colours – the breezes make me lascivious – the beauty makes me restless – there is nothing peaceful about this summer countryside. This indecent display of charms is a standing invitation to lust and venery.
4 September 1945.
Back to Ottawa on a train crowded with returning soldiers. Train after train travels across Canada from east to west laden with them, dropping them off by threes and fours at small towns and in their hundreds at the big cities. The train windows are crowded with their sunburned, excited faces. They lean out in their shirtsleeves, whistling at the girls on the station platforms, making unflattering jokes about Mackenzie King. We passed through one little station where there were a few mugwumps standing about on the platform staring bemusedly at the train and a group of soldiers on the train began themselves to cheer, “Hurray! Give the boys a welcome.” The stations are crowded with them striding about self-consciously man men of the world – having proved something about themselves that is plainly to be seen in their sun-paled divisional patches and the ribbons on their chests – the 1939–43 Star, the Africa Star, the France and Germany award, the Voluntary Service Ribbon.
The women look at them fondly, the men respectfully and perhaps enviously. Everyone says, “It is a big moment for them.” These are our heroes – the “Flowers of the Nation’s Manhood,” etc. This is the role – every man his own Hotspur – and they play it to advantage; good-humoured, cynical, knowing their way around – they make the other men look tame and “stay-at-home.”
The streets are fuller every day of demobilized soldiers. They wear pinned to their civilian coats emblems of overseas service and rows of ribbons, but you could not fail to recognize them anyway – the straight up and down army back which they will never entirely lose – the sunburned necks and the new clothes. They go in for sporting jackets fresh off the hook – perhaps a souvenir of English fashions.
7 September 1945. Ottawa.
An office day – I get up with a slight hangover but feeling pretty healthy and not gloomy – not anything – just like a bloody clock wound up to run for another twelve hours and off I go to my office in the Department of External Affairs. I read the papers obediently, skipping the story about the gangsters to concentrate on Keynes’s statement on economic policy. I cast a wary eye at the social notes. I get down to work. All morning a stream of interesting and informative telegrams and dispatches from missions abroad comes pouring across my desk. I am tempted to read them all and to try to understand what is really happening, but if I do that I have not time to draft answers to the most immediate telegrams and dispatches crying out for instructions. I must skim through everything with my mind concentrated on immediate practical implications. If I try to be objective and to comprehend all the issues I am lost. I draft telegrams and speeches under pressure, short-term considerations uppermost – “Will the Prime Minister sign this?” – “Are we not too short of personnel to be represented at this or that international meeting?” This is the way policy is made on a hand-to-mouth basis out of an overworked official by a tired politician with only half his mind on the subject.
12 September 1945.
Sally Gordon-Ives is here on a visit. She has never recovered from Victor’s death in the war. She said, “I suppose he was lucky to be killed young when he was at the height of his enjoyment. Anything is better than being dead in life.”
I wish the dead could use our bodies, feel our sensations, see with our eyes. If Victor’s spirit lingers in some limbo I should like to lend him this apparatus for living and when I have been dead a little while I should like someone to do the same for me.
22 September 1945.
How devastating it would be to find celibacy bearable – to get fairly comfortably into the habits of chastity and then to find it too much trouble to get out of it again.
I have just been reading a dispatch about the difficulties of life in Moscow. I must say it sounds very much like Ottawa – “For instance, the difficulty of finding a mistress and making arrangements for cherishing her.” But the pressure of work keeps me rivete
d to this spot under an uneasy spell. Just as I get to the point of saying to myself that I cannot stand this life a moment longer a crisis blows up – I am brought in – something has to be done in a hurry – a formula has to be found – a way of getting around things devised – a situation met. I am on a stretch – my will and brain and judgement are called upon. I live on this stimulus.
23 September 1945. Ottawa.
I have come up against a blank wall. There is nothing to do but turn around and face things. I feel myself hardening. I will not be one of life’s casualties, nor just a sympathetic character. Middle-age is the time when one is supposed to concentrate on the world’s game, care about making a grand slam and watch other people’s play. The game has always interested me but never enough to overcome my love of talking and of sensuous perceptions but now I am bloody well going to have my fling at it. The trouble is that it is only for two or three days at a time that I can deceive myself that I do care about this success game. Then I long to throw my cards in and clear out.
1 I was staying with Saul Rae, of the Department of External Affairs, then stationed in Paris, and his wife.
1 I had been posted back from London to the Department of External Affairs.
1 Norman Robertson was then Under-Secretary of State for External Affairs. He had been part of the original Department of External Affairs formed by Dr. O. D. Skelton.
1 We were on our way to the San Francisco Conference, which was to open in the Opera House there on 25 April and set up the machinery of the United Nations. I was an adviser to the Canadian delegation.
1 Edward R. Stettinius was then American Secretary of State and later United States Representative at the United Nations.
1 Viscount Cranborne (later 5th Marquess of Salisbury) was Secretary of State for Dominion Affairs; Sir Alexander Cadogan, Permanent Under-Secretary at the Foreign Office; Sir Charles Webster, a professor of history, was adviser to the delegation.
Siren Years : A Canadian Diplomat Abroad 1937-1945 (9781551996783) Page 25