BAGMEN OF EMPIRE.

Oamaru Mail, Volume XLIX, Issue 13906, 6 November 1919, Page 7

BAGMEN OF EMPIRE.

(By Shaw Desmond.)

Wherever the British flag "flies over

u consulate, that place to tin.' inhabitant-, whether his skin be white or brown or black, is "England, the consul, the representative of England. The consulate is holy ground, its head the protector of every wan in whose veins the bloocl ot England runs. He is the outpost of empire. Hut he ought to be more. He ought to be the Empire's "commercial traveller." He is not. And it is not his fault. Chance has enabled me to see at short range the working of what should be the Empire's commercial traveller over a. long period in one of Europe's busiest centres. It gave me furiously to think. What should be the business ot tlie consul, -say, in a country which we may call Silubria? To give- exact information to any Silubrian upon the goods of the B.n.tisli Empire : their quality, transport, etc. : where they beat the goods of America and Germany. He should act as a trade telephone exchange to put any bilubriaii thiough to any British manufacturer, and to see that he gets through. His consulate .should be a bureau ot iniovniation available for . any British manufacturer who wants .to know about the trade' possibilities of Silubria and the psychological peculiarities and tyade customs of the Silubriaii (a vital point). Can he do that ? He cannot. The consul or viceconsul (I am here using tlie terms interchangeably) is usually a drudge of empire. He works like a coolie at the pay of a super-eodlie. His energies are sapped by routine work, much of which a clerk could do, and by "reports" which don t matter. He is ridiculously understaffed and underpaid. He holds himself to the "legation set" when it exists, which, with liis insufficient salary means that he seldom gets the chance to know the country or its people, with whose language lie has often only a nodding acquaintance. Our consul has had to pass a mad examination which has doue its best to unlit him l'or the business of empire. There are three branches of the consular service —(1) the general, (~2) the Far-Eastern, and (■)) the Near-Eastern. If he is in the last he will have had to pass a competitive examination in French, German, Italian, Spanish —and Latin and Greek- why the two last, Heaven and the Civil Service Commissioners alone know. Arithmetic they don't bother about. It is as elementary as no matter.

He has then had to go to Cambridge for two years, where he has been bniin-addled by stiff examinations in such trifles as Arabic, Turkish, Persian, Russian, Turkish and Persian history, and English law ! \t one time the i>oor . devil would have been examined also in Turkish or Persian law. After worrying through this inferno, he is rewarded by a 111turnifinent <£;! so a year, rising by .£'ls a year to £450 as vice-consul, plus an officer's allowance of. say, £IOO. Compared with pre-war rates, his income is worth about £225.

Xo wonder, as I have seen more than mice, when the vice-consul or commercial attache's help pets a tempting offer from local firms ■ he onits the service. You can't blame him. The Americans have another way. Their men have been generously paid. They have trebled the staff of the commercial attache, himself one of America's prominent business "men. They have sent a stream of valuable information, meaning millions to America, across the Atlantic. They have appointed, wherever possible, Americans Lorn in the country ij; question, knowing language ami people. laying. as always in An)eric.", first stress on "the personal factor." They have switched the local merchant by the hundred through to the States and where-as. when J first knew the country nine years ago, everybody swore by John iiull and English goods, to-day there is a steady trend towards America and Uncle Sam.

Fortunately. the consular unci '"diplomatic commercial"' service is beimr revised", I nit unfortunately there is a talk of retaining the 'discredited examination system, though modified. Speakinir from intimate experience, I should suggest the following reforms: —(I") The placing of eonsvilate, legation. and commercial attache's uli'ice under one roof, preventing jealousy and securing efficiency : ('J) abolition of the examination (uk! the taking of consuls, etc.. from the business world, paying firstclass men tempting salaries: (•"'>) doubling or trebling of present staffs, using clerks for routine work; (I) "live"' information bureaus for collection and distribution of local information : and last, and most important, the securing of consuls who have personality, speak the language, and mix with the people.

All of which means the building of British foreign trade around the Consul.