HANDS’ OF DIPLOMATS

Timaru Herald, Volume CXLII, Issue 20509, 29 August 1936, Page 11

HANDS’ OF DIPLOMATS

WOMEN IN THE BACKGROUND The lives of scores of women in London have been fundamentally altered by the many international conferences which have taken place recently, says an overseas correspondent. They are the typing staffs and secretaries who work in London’s Government buildings—the “hands” of the diplomats—and the charming and ultra-efficient personal secretaries who travel with delegates. Nearly every day during conferences exhaustive reports on the international situation and naval, military, and other matters have to be typed. These are often amended several times before they are finally passed—and usually each time the tireless “copy room” giris of the Government department do the whole statement over again. Sometimes these reports are so secret that all spare copies have to be destroyed. Even carbon paper is burned if there is the slightest chance of it bearing the imprint of secret statements. Hours cease to count when work of such importance is on hand. In the most critical days of the Rhineland talks, for example, delegates of the Foreign Powers were busy long after midnight—and then again before breakfast. Their sec/etaries had to be ever ready to attend to the despatch of cables and to type urgent reports for their home Governments. Mrs Anthony Eden, wife of Great Britain’s Foreign Minister, has a quarrel with dimpomatic conferences. Recently, she told a meeting of Conservative women that she had hardly seen her husband for weeks. He had been overwhelmed with work. Wives of other diplomats, on whose shoulders rest such heavy responsibilities, are sharing the same experience. Their husbands are busy every moment of the day—even their meal times are turned into informal conferences. Even when at home, their meals are usually official affairs, for the presence of so many foreign diplomats in London has meant that a great burden of entertaining has fallen on their wives—and, believe me, entertaining diplomats usually is a burden. The guests, for example, have to be carefully chosen and their places at table must be arranged so that even the most sensitive diplomat could find no fault with that terrible bugbear, “the order of precedence.” Bad feeling caused by some such unintentional slight has, in the past wrecked more than one conference.