Speaking among friends C.2

Once upon a time, Ambassadors and the like used to be, in public at least, quiet and discreet people. If they had anything to say, and from time to time they had, they said it behind baize doors (this was essential) in something. called, at any rate in Europe, a Chancellery. Now this is all changed. Modern architecture does not go for green baize. Modern Governments have offices, bureaux and secretariats rather than Chancelleries; and modern diplomats, bereft of both baize and Chancelleries, are sometimes heard to utter outside official surroundings.

Of course, even if they are not as quiet as they once were, they are still discreet. They are guests in the country in which they serve, and they owe proper courtesy both to their hosts and to their hosts' other guests. But, with all this, kind people from time to time ask them to talk in public, and, from time to time, they may chance to say something worth while.

Obviously a great deal that I have said over four years was purely or mainly ephemeral comment on questions no longer interesting. But the sifting left a residue of talks which showed some possibility of survival. In presenting them, I do not find any great virtue in protesting either that one has not changed a word, or that one has revised everything to suit the reader whose taste differs from that of the listener. What I have done in effect is to tidy up a few sentences which neither the reader nor I could have with. Diplomatic peeches are not, unfortunately, written in quietly efficient ivory towers (or Chancelleries) : they suffer as much as any human activity from haste and carelessness. But I have kept my cheating strictly limited, and have not tried to improve obviously deficient argu ment or supply omissions which should not have occurred. These remain as proof that diplomats are human.