Round the Coasts of Europe

Timaru Herald, Volume CXLIII, Issue 20782, 17 July 1937, Page 12 (Supplement)

Round the Coasts of Europe

INTERESTING MEMOIRS OF A DIPLOMAT

At the beginning of this, ms second volume of reminiscences, ‘Theatre of Life:” 1905-1936 (Hodder and Stroughton), Lord Howard of Penrith expresses the fear that no one will care to wade through the many pages which he devotes to the island of Crete, where he was the British representative from 1903 to 1906. It is true that Crete is now of no international significance and that the turbulent transactions and endless intrigues in which Lord Howard could not avoid being involved are now of interest only to the historian, or rather to the super-historian who thinks it worth while to peer into these obscurities. Yet he will not go unrewarded. V. e need no longer concern ourselves with the Cretan rivalries of Venizelos and Prince George of Greece, but there ar. illuminating asides on other personages of the drama. From University to Prison For example, one Dr Jannaris, a Cretan patriot, returned to the island after having held for some time the post of Professor of Modern Greek at St. Andrews, he used unsuitable language about Prince George, who, whatever his faults may have been, was the High Commissioner, and so Jannaris was condemmed by the High Court to two years’ imprisonment. This created a stir among his friends in Scotland; questions were asked in Parliament and Prince George was attacked in the Liberal Press. Lord Howard was told to interest himself unofficially in the case and do what he could to obtain a mitigation of the sentence. This was eventually accomplished, in spite of many difficulties. On one occasion Jannaris—who was very proud of being a Greek —said that he would never trust the Prince’s word: “You think,” he said, “that he is a Dane and can be trusted because he has blue eyes, but I tell you he is a Greek." The Mayor could not Read! Another aside. It happened that Mechmet Bey, an influential Moslem, was retiring from the post of mayor and was sought for by all parties as their candidate at the next elections. He himself desired to stand as an independent, but the Government charged him with having rather sided with the Venizelists, and for that reason en! rr - ! a protest against his candidature on the ground that he could neither write nor lead Greek. However, the Government was so vehemently urged to give him a public appointment that Prince George, probably with his tongue in his cheek, made him Councellor for the Interior, which included Education, a curious post indeed for a man who could not read or write the language of the country! Lord Howard next proceeded to Washington, from which Embassy Sir Mortimer Durand was departing. “The way Sir Mortimer was treated,” he says, “seemed to me then and still seems to me to have been most unjust and uncalled for.” It appeared that Sir Mortimer, who had lived all his life in the East, could not appreciate Theodore Roosevelt’s lack of conventional methods—and the President, who was very human, liked to be appreciated. Thus we see that the recent dismissal of Monsieur Titulescu (which he himself knew nothing of until his secretary informed him that the news had just c-me on the radio) has a parallel In our own diplomatic service.

The Registrar was Puzzled! Lord Howard was at this time Mr Esme Howard, and when he wished to

register the birth of Edmund, his fourth son, who was born in Budapest, the official remarked that he had never yet come across the name Esme. He wished to know its equivalent in Hungarian, and if there was none he would be obliged, he said, to enter the child among the illegitimate births. The altercation became rather heated, and the registrar, threatened with a complaint to his Government, gave way! One of the Consul-General’s visitors was Trebitsch Lincoln, who brought a letter from the Foreign Office but was anxious to embark on a speculative proposition of which the letter said nothing. “I never saw a man,” says Lord Howard, whose rascality was so obviously worn on his sleeve for daws like myself to peck at. If I remember rightly I wrote to the Foreign Office about him something of this kind: ‘ I treated Mr Trebitsch Lincoln with all th ■ respect due to an Elected of the People" (he was at that time M.P. for Darlington) “and with all the circumspection required in dealing with an obvious rascal." A Traffic in Maps Lord Howard’s first post as head of a mission was at Berne, whose simplicity and peacefulness appealed to him; it is very entertaining to read of Herr Forrer, the President who used to go on early walks with the British Minister and thought nothing of carrying under his arm a large brown-paper parcel in which were young turnips from his garden; he would take them to his colleagues at the council, whose gardens were not as far advanced as his. But even in Berne the diplomat can have alarums and excursions. A German agent left a parcel of maps and a note that he would call in a month or so. Lord Howard forwarded the maps to the War Office, who replied that, while they were of no particular interest , they would like to see the others referred to in the man’s letter and for that purpose they sent out an official.

To cut a long story short, it transpired that the German Government was carrying on a tegular traffic in false maps with which they deceived foreign and quileless Governments, besides reaping a considerable income from these transactions.

In October, 1912, the Kaiser attended the Swiss Army manoeuvres, though there was no great desire to entertain his Majesty and the very large staff he brought with him. However, this visit may have served Switzerland extremely well, since the visitors were much impressed by what they saw and may then have resolved to invade France in the next war by way of Belgium. One is reminded by Lord Howard that in 1914 the German financiers had withdrawn the greater part of their deposits in Paris and London some weeks before war was declared, which makes it difficult, he says, to avoid the conclusion that the withdrawal must have been arranged on the inspiration of the German Government, which had already made up its mind to let Austria go all the lengths in dealing with Serbia!

Disagreement with Lloyd George During the War Lord Howard was posted at Stockholm, which is usually a very tranquil legation. One, at any rate, of his successors—a fact which Lord Howard does not mention—asked the Foreign Office to transfer him to a country less removed from the European whirlpool. But in the War Stockholm was not an abode of peace. Cargoes had to be stopped, neutrality had to be enforced, on every side complications arose. Mr Lloyd George is criticised in the pages devoted to post-War negotiations, which Lord Howard was concerned with both in Paris and in Poland. It appears that “LI. G.’s” contribution to the Polish victory (with the help of the French General Weygand and some other French officers) over the Russians in 1919 was to advise the Poles to accept any terms the Bolsheviks would offer. Lord D’Abernon declared that this would have been a “disastrous capitulation." Lord Howard is inclined to go further and remarks that “had they been accepted they would have reduced Poland to a mere satellite State of Soviet Russia." An amusing error attributed to Mr Lloyd George is that on one occasion he did not recognize the uniform of the band of the Royal Artillery and thanked Paderewski for bringing his own musicians to the Peace Conference. This may be paralleled by the story that was told in the United States of an American Senator afraid of foreign entanglements. “I suppose, Mr Paderewski," he said, “that every time you play to the President on that fascinating instrument of yours"— making a gesture with his arm as if he were fiddling—"you get a promise of another province for Poland,”