17 March 1956.
One of the drearier diplomatic days. Went to the St. Patrick’s Day reception at the Irish Embassy, a cheerless and squalid party unworthy of Ireland. A pile of dried old shamrocks for the guests, looking like a garbage heap, stout and watered Irish whisky to drink, and no warmth in the welcome. Dined at the Belgian Embassy. The new Ambassador and his wife have made it magnificent, the only Embassy with any style in Bonn. The dinner party had no spark. Afterwards we sat islanded in little groups in the enormous rooms. First I bored the Greek Ambassadress, then I told two long and boring stories to some people on a sofa. Then we talked about why dentists become dentists. The Portuguese Ambassador talked about Goa, and we came home.
Every middle-class German in every city is this morning starting out with his briefcase clasped firmly in his hand, wearing his long mackintosh or belted leather coat, off for his week’s work, and through the half-ruined, half-rebuilt streets of the German cities goes an army of workers of all classes. The whole of Germany is like a vast school with no idle boys in it. Here everyone obeys the rules, no one protests. They cut down the only charm of Bonn – the noble trees lining the streets. There is no protest. People try to make the best of it and say, “It is brighter now.” Brighter indeed!
22 April 1956.
Spent the whole day working on my telegram to Ottawa about the German situation and afterwards read it to Sylvia, something I never do with political dispatches. She seemed far from enthusiastic. I know it is not clear and interesting enough to hold her attention, but I despair of making it more so without over-simplifying. I sympathize with political journalists who try to make things reportable and interesting and keep them true. I think that most get to a point when they don’t want to know any more about the subject. They have decided on the line they are going to take in their articles and it is confusing and encumbering to learn something new which does not fit into the picture. My trouble is a little different. I find it hard to recommend a policy except under pressure. I cannot construct in a void, and our relations with Germany are almost a void. I left off writing and went for a solitary walk when I met my friend Admiral Campbell-Walter, RN, who has some ill-defined naval job here. He was very red in the face from celebrating the christening of one of his ratings’ children. I like him very much. He is a kind of male ex-beauty, very handsome and with many conquests to his credit. He began early to learn the arts of love from Queen Marie of Romania when he was a young naval lieutenant.
Blair Fraser, the Canadian journalist, was here the other day. He is courageous, honest, and intelligent. He thinks that the Liberals are in trouble in Canada and that they will lose the election. They have depended for much of their influence on the support of a small group of publicists, professors, civil servants, and men of influence, and it is this group whose support they have lately lost.
5 June 1956.
The aunts are again staying with us – Elsie much older but still wonderful, Beatrice ageless and clear in the head but with some strange words. For instance, she says she was “dumb struck” and that someone was “criss-crossed” instead of “double-crossed.” On June 2 we went over to Groesbeek Cemetery in Holland for the dedication by the Duke of Gloucester of the Canadian part of the cemetery where John Rowley is buried. It was a sunny day. The cemetery looked almost cheerful on one of the few hills in Holland. The Duke of Gloucester, very pink in the face, with popping azure eyes and wearing across his uniform the azure ribbon of the Garter, read a speech from a piece of paper held in very shaky white-gloved hands. Afterwards when I was presented to him he mumbled, “I didn’t know there were so many [inaudible] around here.” I couldn’t think what the missing word could have been – graves? Canadians? – so I judged it safer to make no reply.
8 June 1956.
Today there was a very large and very mixed-up lunch party at our house, assembled together for the old Pells. Old Pell is an American diplomat, retired. He looks like an American senator and comes from a “grand American family.” His wife is a full-busted seventy, with a lace shawl and a cupid’s-bow mouth incongruously painted on a Republican lady’s face. She is fond of old English music-hall songs, believes in yoga, eats no meat, and considers that all American husbands are unfaithful with women younger than their wives. All American divorces are, according to her, caused by American husbands playing on their wives’ strong maternal instincts to release them from the bonds of matrimony so that they can remarry younger wives. “The American success woman is a myth. If you could only see into their hearts,” she said, “you would know that they are hiding the scars inflicted on them by mainly immature and worthless American men.” The new Australian Ambassadress attempted several times to interrupt by quoting U.N. statistics on divorce which proved something – just what, I never could make out. Later in the day little Del Dongo came to dinner, a nice Hungarian refugee whom I befriended in Canada, a sort of grown-up Catholic choirboy. He brought with him Father Heim from the Papal Nunciature, a shy Swiss priest who is writing a book on ecclesiastic heraldry and whose brandy glass broke in his hands after dinner. God and the Catholic Church know whether they enjoyed themselves, but they ate and drank willingly.
16 June 1956.
My usual business lunch with Von Welk. What is developing between us is as near to friendship as I have had with any German man and a sort of mutual trust, but with a misunderstood word it could crack up. Today he was very critical of Adenauer, much more openly so than he would have dared to be a short time ago. Altogether the Germans are getting more and more articulate and bold in what they say, as the Occupation recedes.
Dined with the Jakopps, German business people who live around the corner from us here in Cologne. She is plump and might be sentimental, wore a sort of handcuff of diamonds and emeralds. The German women began talking among themselves about the privations and adventures of the years just after the war, 1946–47, telling anecdotes about the shortages, how if they were asked to a reception by foreigners they would try to eat everything in sight because they were so hungry; how they would share one cigarette among a group of them, passing it around the circle; how if they had to make a journey they got lifts in coal trucks. All this was not said in a self-pitying vein or with bitterness – at times as if it seemed funny in retrospect. It shows how much safer, more prosperous, more sure of themselves the Germans are, that they can talk in this way. I must stop writing this diary now as Karl has come in to say, “Tea is served.” Anyway, it is only a sort of acknowledgment for a day of life to write the diary at all, a “bread-and-butter” to God but one that must more often bore than please Him. How often the human race must bore God. I picture a cosmic yawn and His self-question, “Was it worth while creating them?”
18 June 1956.
Yesterday was wrecked for me by the discovery that the dentist had put a gold tooth in my mouth. Of all things in this world I abominate it is the gleam of a gold-toothed smile, so today I went back to the dentist again and demanded that he begin all over and make it silver. He was crimson with irritation and mortification at this reflection on his skilful work on the ambassadorial teeth, but in the end he promised to change it. God, to think that I should end up bald, with gold teeth and hairs coming out of my nose!
23 June 1956.
Still the same sunless summer. We have passed through midsummer’s day without a sunny day. The visit of the Minister of Economic Affairs of Ontario has been a diversion, although an unlikely one. This “little Napoleon” has enlivened us for the last two days by his absurdities. Mistrusting me by instinct as representing the federal authorities, he has treated me throughout with unctuous politeness while bullying and insulting the junior members of the Embassy staff. Yesterday I had a reception for him of German bankers and businessmen. The Minister arrived an hour late, when the Germans were just on the point of departure. The old aunts have left to go home to Canada and we shall miss them. They bring a breath of spontaneity and fun into the stuffiest gathering, and Elsie, even
deaf and ill at seventy-eight, has more heart and vitality than most of the people I know and I really love her.
29 June 1956. London.
Spent the day with Mike Pearson and the Prime Minister and discussed European policy questions and Canada’s relationship to them with Mike. The Prime Minister seems sunk in melancholia. He certainly appears to find no fun or interest in politics and perhaps he had better get out of it.
12 July 1956. Cologne.
My cousin Wilfred Ponsonby is staying here from England. He and Lance Pope were talking as we lunched on a sunny terrace on the Rhine about their exploits when they were prisoners of war in Germany – of getting over the wire, of the brilliant but abortive escape when Lance got out dressed as a German general in a uniform made in camp, only to be caught a few hours later while changing in a nearby wood into civilian clothes. But mostly they talked about tunnels – the incredible feats of engineering, concealment, and patience which went into the digging of these tunnels by underfed prisoners suffering from the lassitude of malnutrition, and how, after months of digging, on the day before the big break-out they were given away to the Germans by a spy in the camp. All day I have been thinking about this kind of staying power, this continuous bending of all energies and ingenuity to the idea of escape and the techniques of achieving it, the turning of everything to one purpose. In the afternoon to an odious reception, mostly Baltic barons and their county wives. Talked to one woman who, when I asked her if she liked Bonn, said, “Wherever mein Mann is, there I am happy.” I nearly laughed in her face.
At this point the developing crisis over the Suez Canal began to overshadow the international scene. As there are so many references in the following diaries to Suez, it may be helpful briefly to recall the history of those events which not only altered the balance of power in the world but affected relations between individuals and led to such bitter and divided personal feelings.
The seizure of the Suez Canal by President Nasser of Egypt in July 1956 led to the intervention by the British and French to retake the Canal. The plan worked out at secret meetings with the Israelis was for Israel to attack Egypt, and then the British and French would go in, ostensibly to separate the combatants. On October 29, Israeli forces crossed the frontier and captured Egyptian border posts, and by November 5 British and French paratroopers landed in Port Said, to be followed by the arrival of ships carrying the main assault forces.
These developments caused consternation in the United Nations, in Washington, and in Ottawa. L. B. Pearson, then Minister of External Affairs, went to the United Nations in New York. He was shocked at the action of the British Prime Minister, Anthony Eden, in sanctioning an enterprise which would antagonize the Arab world, split the Commonwealth, and put such a strain on Anglo-American relations. The idea of a United Nations Emergency Force was not a new one but it was his initiative and his diplomatic skill that brought it into being. Throughout, he worked in close co-operation with the Secretary-General, Dag Hammarskjöld. The United Nations Force was intended to proceed to the Suez Canal area on the withdrawal of the Anglo-French expedition. On November 4 the Canadian resolution setting up the Force was introduced in the United Nations General Assembly by L. B. Pearson and approved by the Assembly.
Meanwhile, the U.S.S.R. was occupied in crushing the two-weeks-old Hungarian people’s rebellion. Now they proposed that the United Nations give military assistance to Egypt. When the Security Council refused to discuss this proposal, the Russians addressed threatening notes to the United Kingdom, France, and Israel. On November 6 the Franco-British invasion of the Suez Canal Zone was halted when Prime Minister Eden agreed to a cease-fire in view of the formation of the United Nations Emergency Force, of the United States’ opposition to the operation, and of a heavy run on the pound sterling. So this ill-conceived venture ended in humiliating failure and the subsequent resignation of Prime Minister Eden on grounds of ill health. In England the role played by Canada in this whole affair aroused mixed feelings. On the surface there was appreciation of the fact that Pearson had helped the British out of an increasingly impossible situation. Yet there was also resentment at the lack of Canadian approval and support for the United Kingdom government. The Prime Minister, Mr. St. Laurent, had indeed made a public statement extremely critical of the United Kingdom and of France. Canadian opinion was divided; the Conservative Opposition launched a bitter attack on the government, claiming that they had sided with Nasser and the United States against Britain and France. The government’s handling of the Suez crisis may have had some effect on the 1957 election, which brought the Conservatives to power for the first time in twenty-two years. Thus Pearson was out of office when he received the Nobel Peace Prize for his contribution to peace-keeping. With the change of government in 1957 and the arrival in office of the Diefenbaker administration, Pearson was succeeded as Secretary of State for External Affairs by Sidney Smith, who in turn was succeeded in 1959 by Howard Green.
14 September 1956.
The shadow of the Suez crisis is over everything, so perhaps this little Bonn world does not look so bad when war might threaten its disappearance. Could we really be headed for another war, or only the humiliation of all that is left of Britain’s greatness? Is it to be a bang or a whimper? The weakness of the British position is that people do not believe in their shopworn phrases such as “free men everywhere” and “world opinion.” The point is that “free men everywhere” are far from convinced that the principle of freedom is endangered by Nasser as they knew it was by Hitler.
15 September 1956. Battle of Britain Sunday.
I do wish the English would stop saying that the choice is between war and their having to pay one and sixpence more for a gallon of petrol because it would have to come around the Cape, because this argument cannot make them many converts.
We went to the Battle of Britain Sunday service in the little RAF church here and had gin and tonic afterwards on the lawn of the RAF Mess with the Air Vice-Marshal, who thinks there will be a war and blames it on the Foreign Office. Spent the afternoon reading the Sunday papers about Suez until I could read no more and turned to the Towers of Trebizond by Rose Macaulay.
16 September 1956.
A break from the crisis in the form of a visit to Bonn by the King and Queen of Greece. There was a reception for them last night at Schloss Brühl.1 Quite a spectacle. The royal procession leaving between a bowing row of guests looked like an early movie of court life in old Vienna. Schloss Brühl was lighted with candelabra wreathed in roses. The rococo décor had all been renewed and looked theatrical. There were striped marquees in the candle-lit gardens and music “off.” There was a touch of Balkan royalty about the uniforms of the Greek court officials. I shook hands with the manager of the hotel responsible for the catering and said, “Good evening, Your Excellency,” mistaking him for one of my obscurer colleagues. He looked profoundly gratified. The Soviet Chargé d’Affaires came to me (why me?) and said, “Can I go home now?” like a little boy. I said severely, “No, the King and Queen are still here and you cannot leave until they go.” He looked quite desperate.
7 October 1956.
Just back from spending the night in Wiesbaden with Sylvia. Down the Rhine road in a mixture of rain and shafts of sunlight, weather which suits the poetic and dramatic style. Lunched in a restaurant under an old castle on a crag above a village, the village decked with flags for the Weinfest. Drank thin, sour, ice-cold wine and went on a tour of the castle, now a museum. The horrid life lived in that castle by those medieval troglodytes in armour; the small, dank, dark, slit-eyed rooms into which they crowded! The Ritterhall was full of armoured figures and one imagined the echo of the brutish laughter of these sinister iron robots who, once unarmoured, must have thronged around the fireplace roasting an ox or a disobedient serf. It was a giant’s lair from a frightening fairy tale, a place for tortures, with dungeons deep in the rock. In the museum hangs a bearded mask with openings for eyes. This was made red-hot and pressed ov
er the victim’s face; also the first chastity belt I have seen – a thin opening in the iron which nothing substantial could penetrate and a hoop around the body, the key given to the butler and only to be opened if the husband did not return from the Crusades after three years. Down we came from this dismal place and when I saw in the Wiesbaden Gallery the portrait of a young knight in ornamented Renaissance armour with a fair killer’s face, there in the background was just such a Rhine castle on a crag. I thought of those proud whelps being engendered in the dark curtained bed in that top turret chamber behind the thick stone walls with the slit-eyed view down the precipitous tower wall to the broad Rhine flowing between swelling hills. Wiesbaden after this was a welcome return to civilization. I like these German watering-places as well as anything in Germany. They have an agreeable touch of cosmopolitanism. The hotels are good, even luxurious. They can make a decent martini at the bar. The water is boiling hot in the baths. It is pleasant to stroll through the arcades of the casino or to walk along the allées in the garden. We mildly gambled and ate partridge cooked in the German style with sauerkraut and grapes, which made Sylvia feel sick.
8 October 1956.
A visit from a German diplomat concerned with Canada, a large, florid gentleman who emanated scent and appeared to me to be suffering from a hangover, not taking it quietly but trying to override it, thus giving the impression of too much manner. He had uneasy hazel eyes, a faint trace of a duelling scar across his pink cheek, and heavy white hands emerging from cream-coloured silk cuffs worn rather long in the English manner. He was certainly in no condition to discuss the Air Training Programme or any other Canadian–German question. Later Aga Fürstenburg came in for one of our absurd German lessons. We are reading a Simenon detective story in German but she interrupts the whole time to gossip in English. She is very good company but my German is not progressing. I had been told how after the assassination plot against Hitler she had hidden two of the plotters in her apartment in Berlin. I asked her how she got away with it and why she was not suspected. She said, “The Nazis never did take me seriously.” Perhaps that was the best protective colouring in that jungle.
Diplomatic Passport : More Undiplomatic Diaries, 1946-1962 (9781551996790) Page 11