Diplomatic Passport : More Undiplomatic Diaries, 1946-1962 (9781551996790)

by Ritchie, Charles

  17 June 1952. Wolfville, Nova Scotia.

  I am here on a visit with my mother. The road into Wolfville runs parallel to the shoreline of Minas Basin. You only see the broad stretch of water and the bold profile of Blomidon at intervals. Most of the time it is blotted out by fields and houses, but even the unseen presence of that magic mountain makes the banality of the main street seem reassuring and cozy. The little town seems like a place met with at the very beginning of a fairy story, before out-of-the-way things start happening – a jumping-off place and a place to which, in the end, one is not sorry to return, to see its lights cheerfully glowing after an excursion into strange terrain.

  31 August 1952. Ottawa.

  Last night after dinner we went out into the street to watch the Northern Lights. I have never seen them in such magnificence. Anyone who did not choose to call them Northern Lights could not fail to think that this was a revelation of God, his power moving in the firmament; the long, quivering fingers of light seemed alive as they wove their shifting patterns in the sky. At one moment a cone of light at the top of the sky seemed to shed just those rays seen in sacred pictures, and one could expect a Blake-like vision of God the Father. The silent shiftings of these long cones of light and the subtle, swift sliding of one colour into another seemed a performance of intricate music, a manifestation of a vast, benign, and playful intelligence – the music of the spheres. And then suddenly it became for me a most unbearable bore. I went into the house and deliberately picked up a novel and read it, to escape the imposition of sublimity. I felt the same kind of sleepiness, restlessness, and revolt which great music, mountain peaks, and sunsets produce after a brief exaltation in me.

  6 December 1952.

  Work.

  7 December 1952.

  Work.

  8 December 1952.

  Work.

  9 December 1952.

  Work.

  10 December 1952.

  I am now in charge of the Department of External Affairs.

  January 1953.

  Work, work, work.

  One day in the autumn of 1953 I told the Minister, Mike Pearson, that I wanted to be posted abroad. He was reproachful and urged me to stay, saying, “I thought you were a working diplomat and did not care for a representational job.” He was quite right – I was never to enjoy the representative side of an ambassador’s role and always to look back upon my days in the Department as the most satisfying of my career. But once my decision was taken I could not wait to go, and I used to fear that I might break a leg on the icy streets of Ottawa and have my departure delayed. With this onset of restlessness came a return to the diaries.

  7 October 1953. Ottawa.

  This last weekend was warm enough to come up to the Wrongs’1 cottage in the Gatineau country outside Ottawa. Yet it is hardly warm enough. We had to huddle before a fire last night but today it has turned to this soft, fickle weather, with warm days on sheltered wharves by the lake with the sun on them but, high up here on the verandah, a chilly wind blowing across the lake. Sylvia, at the other end of the verandah, is painting my portrait. She has me writing, clad in a blue dressing-gown, and has made me look like Harold Laski, my least favourite character.

  It is very quiet here except for the wind in the pines around the house, the sound of cowbells from the farm nearby where we get water in pails, and the occasional cars passing on the nearby road. The house is full of brown and red butterflies, the colour of the changing leaves. They crawl against the mosquito netting on the verandah, trying to get out. I pick them up very delicately between finger and thumb by their closed wings, open the screen door, and throw them into the air. The verandah floor is strewn with obsolescent wasps, torpid in this autumn air with hardly the spirit left to sting.

  The signs are for a peculiar season. Squirrels are making no hoards of nuts; there are no berries on the trees. The bears, driven out of the woods by the forest fires, have come as near as the suburbs. It is too warm for them to hibernate and they go blundering round outlying farms, beating down barn doors in search of food, in an ugly mood, put out of their annual routine.

  For my part, like the animals I feel a break in routine. I am once again on the edge of one of those trans-Atlantic migrations which have been the pattern of my life. I am going back to Europe, away from the mindless beauty of these woods and lakes, away from the daily reassurance of making good in a community where there is no attractive way of going to the bad. One fact about Ottawa has from the first been clear – that for me there is only one temptation here, whisky. How often have I vowed that whatever else this place does to me it is not going to make me into a drunk.

  23 October 1953.

  There go those Sunday bells from the carillon of the Peace Tower of the Parliament Buildings! I can never forgive Ottawa its Sundays, yet I am conditioned to this place and to the work in the office and am somehow scared of a change and of being turned back on my own resources after the incessant work of the office. It is only a few weeks now before I leave for England and then to accompany the Prime Minister on his tour of the Far East and after that, God knows what. They have suggested my going as Ambassador to Madrid but I cannot face it. There is no work there and one could not live on picturesque views of Spain and visits to the Prado.

  This job as Deputy Under-Secretary for External Affairs has been a tough one, requiring toughness in the occupant. It also needs experience. On top of that, it calls for a certain flair for sensing the situation and subjects which are “sensitive,” in which a mistake can rapidly become a blunder. I have the experience and something of the flair, but I lack the toughness.

  So far as policy is in question, I see policy as a balance, also a calculated risk, as the tortuous approach to an ill-defined objective. All-out decisions, unqualified statements, irreconcilable antagonisms are foreign to my nature and to my training. In these ways I reflect my political masters, the inheritors of Mackenzie King, and I am fitted to work with them. I believe, too, that such temperaments are needed in this dangerous period of history, which is no time for heroics to be paid for in a currency of disaster.

  In administration I tend to the concrete and the human and want to break the rules to fit the individual case, the object to get out of people the most effective element that they can contribute. This may lead to injustice but would avoid the worse thing – waste. My ignorance of and contempt for rules and regulations would wreck any system unless counterbalanced by someone who could sustain the necessary framework. But most of the time I am simply rushed off my feet with work, passing by human situations which would be obvious if I had the time to look twice, making decisions by a mixture of know-how and instinct, always in danger of a mistake or a lost opportunity or a damaging delay.

  13 December 1953.

  It is Jack Pickersgill, always a good friend to me and very close to the Prime Minister, who has suggested my name to Mr. St. Laurent to accompany him on his visit to Europe and the Far East. I am to be his External Affairs adviser, to accompany him on his official calls on prime ministers and heads of state, to keep a record of his conversations with them, and generally to make myself useful. I approach this assignment with trepidation. I do not know Mr. St. Laurent or how I shall get on with him. Also, I do not know the Far East and am nervous lest he pepper me with questions about these countries to which I cannot supply the answers. His daughter Madeleine, his son Jean-Paul, are going with him, plus a small entourage including a doctor, his secretary – the admirable Annette Perron, the clever and charming young Ross Martin from the Privy Council Office, on whom I shall depend a lot for companionship, and an elderly and none-too-efficient valet. We shall fly all the way in an RCAF plane whose captain, John Stevenson, I have just met. He is handsome, humorous, and, I should think, eminently capable.

  I intend to try to keep up this diary during the trip but the official and political record will be contained in the telegrams which I shall be drafting for the Prime Minister’s approval, so that this wil
l be a matter of personal impressions.

  It is to be a tour of goodwill, support, and friendship and no concrete results are expected.

  12 February 1954. Bonn.

  This is the first moment that I have been able to catch my breath for long enough to return to this diary. We have just arrived here from the Prime Minister’s visit to Paris, which, from the political point of view, I found deeply depressing. I have been drafting the telegrams giving the high points of the Prime Minister’s interviews with M. Schuman and the other political leaders. Their general outlook on the world was one of profound anxiety and negativism. There was no belief in the European Defence Community in its present form and they had no suggestions for alternatives.

  The Prime Minister, his daughter Madeleine, and I stayed at our Embassy, which is a magnificent house in the rue du Faubourg Saint-Honoré. The visit got off on the wrong foot from the start. From the moment that we entered the panelled salon with its chandeliers and elegant eighteenth-century furniture, with a footman bringing glasses of champagne on a silver salver, I could see that the Prime Minister, who was tired anyway, did not at all appreciate this style of “gracious living” (which I know he thinks is “un-Canadian”). The Ambassadress, the beautiful Madame Désy, did not help matters. Encased in satin, she seemed frozen into a formal attitude like an ambassadress in a play. Jean Désy talked with nervous intensity. He is a highly intelligent man but should have sensed that the Prime Minister was not in a responsive mood.

  Dinner was even worse. We filed into the beautiful but chilly Louis Seize dining-room and were spaced at wide intervals round a marble table. The food was elaborate, the wines varied, the conversation stilted in the extreme. At times there were pools of silence of several moments’ duration. For some reason, and although I was not in any way responsible for the social freeze, I began myself to feel both nervous and embarrassed. I do not know whether it was cause and effect, but, biting on a piece of Melba toast, a loose tooth suddenly came unstuck, falling into my cup of consommé with a plop which was clearly audible in the silence round the table and drew all eyes upon me.

  15 February 1954. Bonn.

  The contrast in political atmosphere between this place and Paris is extraordinary. There is no mistaking the ability and forcefulness of the German government équipe, and owing to the smaller scale of the entertainments offered us we have been able to meet and talk to them on a much more intimate and informal basis than in Paris. Here we encountered a firmness of policy line, energy, and decisiveness. Bonn is a deceptive place, in appearance a sleepy university town, but there is an impression of underlying German dynamism and potential strength. To anyone who, like myself, would prefer to see the French in command of the destinies of Western Europe, this is not altogether reassuring.

  The Prime Minister’s interview with Chancellor Adenauer went well. I should say, fairly well. Mr. St. Laurent seemed a little disconcerted by Adenauer’s cynical outspokenness about international personalities and policies. Our man, no doubt wisely, refused to be drawn and restricted himself to expressions of goodwill and careful platitudes, of which, I must say, he has a steady stock. I was much impressed by Adenauer. There is something very formidable about him. He is like a well-oiled, immensely powerful machine moving in the groove. He emanates authority and an unmistakable Catholic touch. His assessments of international forces were realistic. He is adroit, patient, and ironic. His mobility of gait and gesture combine with the mask-like pallor of his face (reconstructed after a motor accident) to leave an impression of agelessness almost uncanny in a man of seventy-six, or is it seventy-eight?

  16 February 1954. Rome.

  The Italian government is new in office, and insecure. The conversations with Italian politicians have been flimsy indeed; the hospitality on a splendid scale.

  Our ambassador here is my old friend Pierre Dupuy, witty, intelligent, one of our best diplomats. There was a funny scene between him and the Prime Minister over the vexed question of exchange of gifts with the Italian government. The Italians have presented the Prime Minister with something handsome in the line of silver and Pierre demurred at the Prime Minister’s intention to reciprocate with a signed photograph in a frame which was not even leather but leatherette, and cheap-looking at that. Pierre pleaded for a silver frame, saying “Prime Minister, in Rome do as the Romans do,” to which the Prime Minister drily replied, “In Rome we do as Canadians do.”

  The Prime Minister has handled himself throughout these meetings with European political leaders with good sense and dignity, and without pomposity. His charm and warmth and his distinguished appearance are attractive. As a Canadian, one feels proud of him, which is more than I can say for all our travelling Canadian politicians. Madeleine is a great asset. Beautiful to look at, spontaneous and friendly and with a sense of humour. She and her father share a dislike of artificiality and pretence.

  The Prime Minister has kept to a line in all his interviews: (1) he has emphasized NATO bonds but refrained from any particular proposal in the NATO framework; (2) he has used the analogy of relations between people of English and French stock in Canada to show how it is possible to cure ancient rivalries and live in productive and friendly relations; (3) he has conveyed throughout that it is enlightened self-interest that has guided Canada in entering into defensive arrangements and in her immigration and trade policies – a frankness which has been appreciated by European statesmen who are a little tired of lofty moral sentiments which conceal interested motives; (4) in his assessment of the risk of war he has expressed his judgement that the U.S.S.R. does not intend war but wants to maintain tension, and this necessitates continued preparedness. On this point there has been striking unanimity among all European statesmen. None believed that aggressive war would be launched by the Russians; none believed in the possibility at this time of a settled peace.

  17 February 1954. Bahrein.

  Bahrein is flooded. They have had rains here such as never before in their history. But today is a fine day, cool after the rain, a stiff breeze on the sea front. Veiled Arab women pick their way across the flooded streets on stepping-stones. In his hovel shop a bearded and turbaned sage smoking a hookah sells you Gillette blades and Colgate toothpaste. The bar of the BOAC hotel is full of types who seem to be deliberately playing up their parts. The manager, ex-RAF, says, “Franco nearly got me in the civil war. I was one of the bad boys in the International Brigade – born on the Khyber Pass – ask them up there if they remember Cook Sahib. That was my old man.” A Danish sea-captain, washed up here because the Japanese took over his ship, describes life in Bahrein: “You wait till the bar opens, drink till lunch, sleep, wait till the bar opens, and drink till dinner, then just drink.”

  20 February 1954. Peshawar.

  Seldom have I come to a place which has had the same instant attraction for me as this. County Cork, the town of Avalon in France, the Isle of Jura, Wolfville in Nova Scotia – all were cases of love at first sight for me. When I awoke this morning it was to hear the Moslem call to prayer floating over an English garden. We are staying at the local Government House. From my window I see an English vista, a village church, hedges, English trees, a cricket ground. The call to prayer and the sound of command and of the bugle are always in the air in Pakistan, yet there is something peculiar to Peshawar, as if we were staying in someone’s house when the host was away. The English haunt the place.

  21 February 1954.

  Up the Khyber Pass. Almost too good to be true, the exhilarating air, the sense of plunging straight into a boy’s adventure story – the tough, hard-drinking commander of the Border Scouts whose idea of fun is to stir up a scrap with the Afghans, an atmosphere of virility, adventure, keen air, dramatic heights with the solitary figure of a Khyber Scout perched on a rock guarding the path against the fighting tribesmen with their home-made guns. The sense of adventure, for us at any rate, was spurious. The Pass is perfectly safe now and in another five years will be placarded with Pepsodent adver
tisements. But cut into the rocks are the emblems of the regiments, British and Indian, who fought in this wild country. The biggest danger I encountered was from the Pakistani colleague who sat in the car next to me sneezing virulently at me as if on purpose till finally I have caught his cold.

  On to Lahore. Our knowledge of the subcontinent appears to be restricted to Government Houses. The Government House in Lahore is a cream-coloured, pillared, sprawling mansion, brilliant in sunlight. The bookshelves are filled with out-of-date English novels (many W. J. Lockes) and old sepia-tinted photographs of picnics and polo games. There is tea before breakfast, the bath is drawn. The servants never leave one alone for an instant. An individual bottle of whisky is brought to one’s room to prepare one for the interminable Moslem banquets without a drop but water to drink. These drinkless banquets and the endless polite conversation are pretty exhausting. Last evening I went in company with a supercilious maharanee and members of the local smart set to the ball for the end of the Lahore horse show. I might as well have been in the Golf Club in Ottawa – the same kind of talk, the same tunes from the band, but with Moslem ladies sitting in groups, not dancing.

  24 February 1954. New Delhi.

  From the moment that we arrived at the New Delhi airport we were in a different world from Pakistan – more settled, richer, neater, less of a poor, untidy pioneer country. The contrast between Karachi and New Delhi is overwhelming. Here is a garden city of broad streets and houses set back among green gardens. No refugees, as in Pakistan, no squalor, no stink, modern cars glide over the asphalt. Here the Foreign Office is a fine stone building, solid and gleamingly clean. I thought of the Karachi Foreign Office in the dilapidated Rajah’s Palace, open to the sandstorms, untidy, improvised like everything in Karachi. And how different are the people. The Moslems in Karachi seemed straightforward, frank, simple, compared with the alien sophistication of the Hindu, a strangeness lurking just under the surface of the Oxford-educated civil servants with whom we associate. Then there is the mixture of morality and the Machiavellian in their politics, their vanity and subtlety in social relations, the insinuating intelligence, the charm which might just be disconcerting.