The Press FRIDAY, MAY 7, 1943. FOREIGN SERVICE

Press, Volume LXXIX, Issue 23941, 7 May 1943, Page 4

The Press FRIDAY, MAY 7, 1943. FOREIGN SERVICE

The Hon. W. Nash, in a broadcast reported this week, said that “ inter- “ national diplomacy—as it had been “ used—was gone for ever.” The context suggested that he was looking forward to a world where international co-operation would have displaced international rivalry. If so, his remark is to be understood accordingly. There will be no room and no use for Machiavelli or Baron Holstein in the world of the Atlantic Charter. This may or may not be true. But there is a sense in which it is to be said that the old diplomacy was outworn and outstripped long before the Atlantic Charter. The German technique of power politics shows with dreadful clarity how domestic and external policy may be integrated and how, in the latter, diplomacy is but one function of' a control embracing every form of relation, political, financial, economic, social, and propagandist, and equipped to use them all to the same end. It is a dreadful example, however, of a development which can grow to good as well as ill. If the Atlantic Charter regulates the post-war world, it will not do so along a different line of development but along that one, the uses of which will be indispensable to its fulfilment. If it does not—and if there is any alternative to chaos or despotism outside the principles of the Atlantic Charter—the conduct of foreign affairs must still develop along that line. Mr Eden’s Reforms

The White Paper of January last, in which Mr Eden outlined his Proposals for the Reform of the Foreign Service, is not a long step in that direction, though a very important one. As a measure of Foreign Office reform, it proposes radical changes in the selection and training of personnel. Their effect will be to open the field of selection wide, to specialise and extend the training of entrants, to provide a second selective test, after preliminary training, and to facilitate rapid promotion from the bottom by allowing for early pensioning at the top. There are special arrangements to admit older men and women, exceptionally qualified, from other departments and from outside the Civil Service; and non-permanent inter-departmental transfers, out of and into the foreign service, “ will not be excluded ” which means, probably, that useful ones will be encouraged. Further, the amalgamation of the Foreign Office and the Diplomatic Service will be completed by bringing in, also, the consular and commercial diplomatic services. If these reforms are carried out, it will cease to be true that the Diplomatic Service is recruited from too small a circle, tends to represent the interests of sections rather than of the nation,, too imperfectly understands economic and social questions, and dangerously narrows the experience and knowledge of its members. In proposing that all entrants shall be qualified, “ not “merely in languages and history “but in economic and commercial “ affairs,” Mr Eden has done more than acknowledge that the diplomat ought to know something about these latter subjects; he has accepted, finally and fully, the new conception of the diplomat’s function. This is emphasised in the proposal to abolish completely all distinctions between the Foreign Office and Diplomatic Service, the Commercial Diplomatic Service, and the Consular Service and to amalgamate all three in the new Foreign Service. But the reforms of the White Paper, far-reaching as they are, do not yet reach as far as that conception would carry them. The Wider System

Mr Eden’s reforms may be regarded as a comprehensive measure of reorganisation within the Foreign Office system. It implies, but does not pursue, a principle of reform which must widen the system. If the Foreign Service is not merely to be expertly informed over a much wider field than ever before, but to play its proper part in shaping and directing policy, then it is clearly necessary to give it appropriate powers; and that means reallocating functions which are at present divided and confused. The Board of Trade, the Department of Oversea Trade, the Ministry of Economic Warfare, the Ministry of Information—these and other departments all exercise functions which overlap those of the Foreign Office and the Diplomatic Service; and particular expedients, such as the appointment of oversea Ministers, the appointment of supply and military missions, and so on, all emphasise both the present inadequacy of the Foreign Office system and the diversity Of the authorities at work in the sphere of foreign relations. It is a dangerous diversity, not merely in its present tendencies but as they may be perpetuated. After the last war the Haldane Committee reported, unanswerably well, on the need for departmental reorganisation, reducing the number of departments, reallocating functions, and co-ordinat-ing them accordingly. This report still holds the key to effective control of policy and administration generally and in foreign affairs particularly. If it is used, the Foreign Service will sooner or later become centrally responsible for the present functions of other departments, wartime or permanent, which will be regrouped under it.