The Thing to Avoid

A book of etiquette for the British Foreign Service would have been unthinkable before the war; a high proportion of fledgling diplomats then carried the mark of Eton, Harrow or Rugby and the casual polish of Oxford or Cambridge. Last week, however, the word got out that the Foreign Office had sent to Britain's embassy freshmen throughout the world 300 copies (marked "confidential") of a manual of polite procedure.* The elegant vice marshal of the diplomatic corps in London, Marcus Cheke (rhymes with peak), 43, with 14 years of embassy life in Brussels and Lisbon, had drawn up a deportment primer for the 200 raw recruits taken in by the Foreign Service over the past three years.

No Bright Sweater. Cheke's pamphlet turns around the ordeals of Mr. John Bull, the Third Secretary to Sir Henry Sealingwax, ambassador to mythical Mauretania. To the old ambassadors John Bull is typical of Britain's new crop of appointees now at their first posts abroad. Long on economics, finance and social problems, often with brilliant war records, they are, by such standards as Cheke's, still social roughnecks.

Grooming John Bull for his first day in Mauretania, Cheke warns him to expect callers and adds, "the president of the Chamber of Commerce . . . would resent being received by a young man wearing ... a bright green pullover." And Third Secretary Bull had best adjust to being familiarly called "John" by embassy colleagues; "after a day or two ... he may return this vulgar compliment."

Sir Henry Sealingwax's reception calls for young Bull's first big show of tact. "One of his chief duties is to be affable to bores." Each official party has important guests "devoid of social graces and who stand around in dreary isolation." Nothing, Cheke affirms, is worse than "dreary individuals standing in gloomy and solitary silence." To save the reception England expects young John Bull to find his tongue and chat.

No Vacant Stare. "The thing to avoid is silence," Cheke has found, and this goes especially for dinners. "On sitting down, Mr. Bull should without delay engage one of his two neighbors in conversation . . . though at some stage of the meal you will find that both your neighbors are deep in conversation but not with you." All that John can do is "make the best of a bad job, be careful not to fall into a vacant stare and take the first opportunity of getting back into the talk." If the British custom of retiring after dinner is not observed in Mauretania, John Bull is encouraged to show firmness: "If Mr. Bull wishes to leave the drawing room, he must simply stroll from the room . . . and ask a servant to direct him to the cloak room."

If John Bull has an aversion to public funerals, he had best overcome it. "In some countries, [they] are unrivaled as occasions in which to cultivate acquaintances. How many an interesting political connection was first conceived by a certain foreign head of a mission in a convulsive handshake in a funeral cortege and cemented by giving him a lift home in his car from the ceremony."

Sometimes, the going may get tough. John Bull must hold in mind the merit of the reply courteous, a point best made by Lord Halifax, whose answer to an egg barrage in Detroit was, "How lucky you are to have eggs to throw." Cheke's concluding advice: "Above all, Mr. and Mrs. Bull should school themselves and remain masters of their tempers."

No Vodka. The leak of Cheke's trade secrets made Cheke's own maxims hard going for an embarrassed British Foreign Service. In Washington, the British embassy hastily checked its Chekes safely behind locked doors; in London, Ernest Bevin was "very cross about it," and Marcus Cheke let it be known he was "most angry." As the matter closed, a last-minute addendum was casually spoken by Sir George William Rendel, the British ambassador to Belgium. "If you serve vodka to the gentleman you're trying to swindle," quipped Sir George, "he recovers his suspicions the next morning. But if you ply him with Scotch, he doesn't get up his guard again for three or four days." John Bull at his post in Mauretania was doubtless still much too young for Sir George's advanced advice.

* The U.S. State Department publishes its own confidential beginners' guide. Sample information: a tiny coffee cup is a "demi-tasse"; a Queen, in informal conversation, may be called "ma'am," but never "madam"; only severants call a duke "your grace," to a diplomat a duke is just "Duke."

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.