DIPLOMATS EXEMPT

Greymouth Evening Star, 29 September 1928, Page 10

DIPLOMATS EXEMPT

SHOULD THEY BE PRIVILEGED?

How long is the Gilbertian situation to last, by which foreign diplomats can, if they so desire, play ducks and drakes with the interests of ordinary citizens? asks a writer in the “London Sunday News.” , That question is now engaging the attention of the Foreign Office. The origin of diplomatic immunity, by which a foreign Ambassador and his staff are exempt from all local jurisdiction, civil and criminal, is a charming story. Nearly two hundred years ago the Russian Ambassador to England was stopped in the street, dragged out of his coach, and detained in custody by some ignorant and pig-headed Englishmen who so far forget themselves as to demand that his Excellency should pay them £5O which was admittedly owing to them. Peter the Great, Czar of all the Russian, was highly indignant. He requested the arrest of all the freethinkers concerned and demanded that some of them should be hanged. But. the English Parliament, with that, artless spirit of. compromise that has made us great, gave Peter the soft answer that turneth away wrath. It passed an Act conferring on Ambassadors and their staffs immunity from being sued in our courts, or imprisoned, or having their goods and chattels distrained. And with a gesture of humility it added a clause that any British citizen harassing a foreign Ambassador or his servants should be liable to pains and penal? ties, or even corporal punishment. Under this protection, foreign Ambassadors could play many naughty pranks, and, as a phrase goes, get away with it.

Happily, Ambassadors usually behave with much greater forbearance than this antique law demands, but sometimes their servants show a greater appreciation of diplomatic privilege than they do themselves. A cook belonging to a foreign Embassy had the misfortune to be arrested on a charge of drunkenness and brought up at Mafrylebion© Police Court. He successfully pleaded the diplomatic right to get as drunk as a lord, or even drunker. A foreign Embassy is, in law, foreign territory, where the King’s writ does not run. Some heathen Chinese, cognisant of this fact, seized the famous Sun Yat Sen, afterwards President of the Chinese Republic, and locked him up a room in the Chinese Embassy in Portland Place until they could find an opportunity to smuggle him out of the country. He threw a note out of a top window, in the best novelette manner, and the Chinese, knowing that the smuggling could now no longer be carried out, released him, and no doubt, as Dogberry would have advised, thanked God they were rid of a rogue. Bethmann-Hollweg, a pre-war German Ambassador refused to pay water rate on his residence at Walton-on-Thames. His plea was upheld. There have many cases where Ambassadors’ motor cars —which someone has called the Jonahs of the Road —have knocked down and injured private citizens. No claim for compensation lies. After all, it has been pointed out, our Ambassadors have the same.inalienable rights abroad. A case quoted by Sir Bruce PorterPorter, the famous surgeon, is less pleasant reading. A South American diplomat went to a. London nursinghome, was treated by specialists, and went off without paying the bill. His Legation declined to take action, dexterously quoting Peter to avoid paying Paul.