CONSULAR OCCASIONS

Otago Daily Times, Issue 23517, 4 June 1938, Page 4

CONSULAR OCCASIONS

SIDELIGHTS ON AFFAIRS “ British Consul.” By Ernst Hambloch. London; Haxrap. 17s. All too rarely do members of the British diplomatic or consular services break their silence to tell the reading public stories of these fascinating professions, but not infrequently their reminiscences have become best-sellers. Mr Ernst Hambloch’s book is perhaps hardly likely to attain the popularity of the memoirs by Lord Frederic Hamilton or Mr R. H. Bruce-Lockhart, but it makes highly-interesting reading, and some significant side-lights are thrown on foreign affairs, not only those of the present day, but also of the immediately pre-war period. Apart from its purely political aspect, the book contains a variety of information about little-known regions of Brazil and out-of-the-way corners of the Balkans. The book, however, lacks the spice of indiscretion which would have made it much more acceptable to the general public. Commencing his career 30 years ago, in the days when consular duties were still largely left in the hands of local business men in foreign centres, Mr Hambloch gained his first experience in Zurich, where he became acquainted with German thoroughness in propaganda work, whether it was for trade purposes or of graver international significance, and where he had an encounter with Russian anarchists. From there he went to Belgrade, and here again the ramifications of German influence loomed up at every corner; he was later to encounter them equally well established in Brazil and, finally, in the Adriatic in the months just before the outbreak of the warrumours and boasts of which he had heard practically throughout his whole service. After the anarchists in Zurich, Belgrade afforded him a social evening with assassins, and one of them produced a ghastly memento of the night when King Alexander and Queen Draga of Serbia were hacked to death in their beds by military officers. The history of the long feud between the Karageorgevitches and the Obrenovitches, in which this deed was only one of the most terrible incidents. is briefly told, and the recent assassination of King Alexander of Jugoslavia at Marseilles is linked with it. Here, too, the author met Count Forgach, a true Ruritanian figure of intrigue, who was responsible for some of the most severe clauses in the Note to the Serbian Government in 1914 after the affairs at Sarajevo. The author’s next station was at Rio de Janeiro, where the Consul-