The Canadian Foreign Service as a Career

COLONEL HILBORN:

The Honourable Charles Ritchie, Canadian Ambassador to the United States of America is yet another distinguished example of Nova Scotia's great con tribution to Canada. Born in Halifax he was graduated from King's College there, then Oxford, Harvard and, after Europe's best diplomatic school L'Ecole De Ccience Politiques, he joined External Affairs in 1934.

His first assignment abroad was in Washington in 1936. During the second world war he was a member of the High Commissioner's Staff at Canada House in London and later served as counsellor at the Canadian Embassy in Paris.

Since 1950 he has been successively Assistant and Deputy Undersecretary of State for External Affairs; Ambassador to the Federal Republic of Germany and Head of the Military Mission in Berlin. In 1957 he was appointed permanent representative of Canada to the United Nations. When Prime Minister Diefenbaker announced his appointment as Ambassador to the United States in February 1962 the Opposition Leader, Mr. Pearson described it as a first class appointment and said that he knew of no better man in the Canadian Diplomatic Service for the post. Hon. Adlai Stevenson at the United Nations referred to our speaker as "My good and able friend, who with his wife, brought grace and wit and intelligence to our United Nations community."

It is perhaps appropriate that one of Canada's most illustrious career diplomats address the Club, from whose senior office, two have gone in recent years to serve and represent our Country as High Commissioners, although it may be unlikely, after the introduction given the Prime Minister two weeks ago, that there will be any further activity along this line in the foreseeable future.

The career of the Hon. Charles Ritchie reflects those terms of reference set out by John Adams, second President of the United States, when he charged his new Envoys to France "to dissipate umbrages, to remove prejudices, to rectify errors and adjust all differences."

A senior and exceptionally gifted diplomat at the summit of public service presiding over our historic embassy in Washington, with its reputation for perceptive interpretation of the forces moving our neighbours, and an understanding of how these forces may be brought in harmony with our interests and ambitions. Articulate, worldly-wise yet earnest, who with high purpose, exceptional ability and abundant wit devotes himself to the highest interest of our country, The Honourable Charles S. A. Ritchie.

MR. RITCHIE:

It is a great privilege and also a great pleasure to have this opportunity to address The Empire Club of Canada. When your distinguished past President, Mr. Roly Michener, first mentioned this invitation to me I was so happy to accept but, now that I find I am following in the footsteps of such distinguished orators as you have been listening to lately, I have my qualms. Diplomats are trained not to talk too much, to avoid headlines, and never to say anything exciting. These are hardly the qualifications for a sensational speaker.

When I chose the subject of my remarks today-the Canadian Foreign Service as a Career -I felt it was peculiarly appropriate to Toronto because Toronto and the University of Toronto have contributed so outstandingly to Canada's foreign service. What a list-even a partial one-of the sons of Toronto University who have done so much to build and influence Canada's position in international affairs; among my own predecessors in the Embassy in Washington-Mr. Massey who, of course, opened the first Canadian Legation there; our present Prime Minister; the late Hume Wrong and the late Leighton McCarthy.

When I turn to the subject of my talk, I inevitably begin to think back to the early days when I, myself, joined the Department of External Affairs thirty years ago, when it was still a young service and a small one, although it had been born as long ago as 1909, when it started with an annual budget of $13,550, with two clerks and four others under Sir Joseph Pope, installed above a barber shop on Bank Street, Ottawa. By the 1930's, Canada had diplomatic missions in London, Paris, Washington, Geneva and Tokyo. The Department had moved to the Victoria Gothic dignity of the East Block, but it was still very far from the complex, highly-organized foreign service of today, with its 81 posts abroad and its personnel strength of 2,285. In those days in the early 30's, the foreign service was less large and complex an organization and more a group of individuals working together, and very individual some of them were. Coming directly under the authority of the Prime Minister, the members of the Department of External Affairs quite often found themselves allotted a varied and interesting variety of jobs. The divisions and sub-divisions of a professional foreign office did not exist. My own first job was to act as an assistant to the present Prime Minister when he was Secretary of the Royal Commission on Price Spreads and Mass Buying. As I knew nothing about price spreads or mass buying, I was put in charge of compiling the index for the report of the Commission-one of the most inefficient and misleading indexes ever compiled.

The spirit of my colleagues in the Department in those days was intellectually stimulating, but had its austere side. Anything that savoured of pretention or glitter in the diplo-matic life was bleakly frowned upon by Dr. Skelton, the Under-Secretary, and his assistants. I was early told that it would be considered an affectation to describe oneself on any official form as a diplomat-one was a Civil Servant. And yet, that little group of my seniors who numbered among them the present Prime Minister, Norman Robertson, Hume Wrong, whether they called themselves diplomats or not, turned out to be among the most influential diplomats of their generation. I linger for a moment over the name of Hume Wrong, because his brilliant mind, his high standards, certainly made him one of the outstanding men of his generation. The foreign service, which was young in those days, has now grown up, but it has maintained its attraction for young men and women of talent and character. It is-if I may unblushingly say so -a fine service of which Canadians can be proud.

Some people seem to have the idea, from time to time, that the foreign service is a rather esoteric and ivory-tower existence. Nothing could be further from the truth. The Canadian foreign service is dealing from day to day with concrete issues which affect the citizens of Canada very directly in terms, for instance, of our economic and trade relations and here, the co-operation between the Department of External Affairs and the Department of Trade and Commerce in the promotion of Canadian exports is only one instance of our continuing co-operation with other government departments in the promotion and safeguarding of Canadian interests abroad.

What of the traditional glamour and formality of diplomacy-the protracted squabbles over precedence-the glittering dinners and receptions? I am afraid in these days the glamour has worn a bit thin. There is still plenty of social activity-too much for some people's tastes-but there is a reason for this-people are different, more relaxed, more ready for informal talk outside their offices, than they are inside. You meet the officials of the government to which you are accredited or the members of the community, to which you live, on a different and easier footing. Sometimes you get some valuable information out of it-sometimes you get fun-sometimes you just get sore feet and indigestion. As one American diplomat remarked to another: "Diplomacy is sure hell on the feet"-to which the other replied: "It depends on whether you use your head or your feet."

What are the motives which attract these men and women to the foreign service as a career? They are certainly not primarily financial. I think one of the main ones, for anyone attracted to international affairs, is the feeling of being able to make some contribution, however small, to the movement of history. There is something exhilarating and rewarding about being in a position to make such a contribution. Needless to say, professional members of the Canadian foreign service do not make foreign policy-that, of course, is the job of the government. But sometimes, in a modest way, they can influence it. Then, without being too solemn and highminded, there is the share of fun and excitement of the life for those to whom it appeals. There is an actual enjoyment of foreign faces, of strange scenes and cultures. And last but not least, there is the pride, nonetheless deep because it is often unspoken, of serving Canada.

Of course, there are drawbacks, and perhaps the greatest of these is that the foreign service officer does not live his life in a community of friends and relations, and cannot bring up his children in such a community. He spends years of his life away from his friends and his country. But, for those who feel the spell of the service, all this is worth it. Like other government departments, the Department of External Affairs is a great school in Canadian unity. We have representatives within the Department of so many strands in Canadian life, so many different backgrounds working together. French Canada, for instance, has, of course, made its outstanding and unique contribution to the character and development of our foreign service under the direction of Secretaries of State for External Affairs like Mr. St. Laurent and Mr. Paul Martin, under the Under-Secretaryship of Jules Leger and the present incumbent, Marcel Cadieux.

Of course, the changes in our own service about which I have been talking, are not limited to Canada. Many of the conditions of diplomacy have radically altered in recent years. The most striking and dramatic of these changes is in the field of communications. Rapid telegraphic communication has completely altered the position of diplomats serving in posts abroad. They are now in receipt of a daily flood of telegraphed instructions and information and they reply by a counterflow of reports. The diplomatic dispatch has become a declining method of communication and a declining art. And telegraphese is not good for the development of a prose style. Moreover, in the days when it took weeks or months for an Ambassador to receive his instructions, he had, of course, far more elbow room to develop initiatives of his own. There is a certain nostalgia in imagining what it must have been to be exempt from instruction by telegraph and telephone. Nowadays, the airplane wafts Prime Ministers, Foreign Ministers and their delegations from capital to capital in an unending minuet of meetings, direct and often intimate confrontations between heads of governments and foreign ministers.

Another development which has changed the traditional pattern of bilateral diplomatic relations is the development of which may be called multilateral diplomacy. The existence of the United Nations is only the most outstanding case of this,-there, a Canadian diplomatic mission is permanently accredited to the world organization. Then, there is in NATO, a new institution unique in the history of alliances, the North Atlantic Council in permanent session in which the diplomatic representatives of the member nations consult with each other on a continuous basis on the political and other problems which face the alliance. There is also the Canadian membership in the Commissions in Indo-China under the Geneva settlement, working under great difficulties in a multilateral framework with Poland and India. There has been a proliferation of international organizations of all kinds since the War-some technical, some economic, some military. Canada is a member of at least 84 and in 1963 Canada was represented at 111 international conferences. These organizations and conferences cover a vast area of activity, and the Canadian delegations are, of course, staffed with experts in these various fields, but there are always political and diplomatic overtones so that they also require the participation of members of the Canadian foreign service.

This gives one some idea of the enormous complexity of the problems with which a modern diplomat is supposed to deal. Canadian-American relations, for example, touch upon almost every phase of the national life of our two countrieseconomic relations, fiscal policies, labour relations, scientific co-operation, the joint development of resources and a dozen other highly technical subjects, together with military co-operation under the North Atlantic Treaty. Indeed, our Washington Embassy is like a miniature of government departments in Ottawa. We have specialists in so many fields and to these, of course, are added visiting delegations of experts from Ottawa. The ambassador is supposed to know something about all these activities-to say that he can master it all, would be to picture a superman, an admirable Crichton who does not, so far as I know, exist, and certainly does not exist in the person of the Canadian Ambassador in Washington. However, one has to have some conception of the nature of these problems.

With all these changes, what is the present role of a representative abroad? For one thing, he ensures continuity and, so far as possible, centralization of effort. He is, after all, semi-permanently stationed in the capital of a foreign country, he is able-or should be able-to report movements of opinion, to gather information, to convey Canadian views on a day-today basis in a way which cannot be supplanted by sporadic meetings at a high, or alternatively, at a more technical level. Although Ambassadors may not be what they once were, there still seems, I am glad to say, to be a need for them.

There is also a permanent need for certain qualities in a diplomat. If he is brilliant, likeable and impressive, that is all to the good, but it is not, I think, the essential thing. The essential things are-to my mind-that a diplomat must be reliable in the sense that those who deal with him know that he is to be trusted. I suppose the worst sin in a diplomat is vanity-the kind of vanity that makes a man exaggerate his role, distort his account of events in order to give himself enhanced credit and which leads to indiscretions from the desire to show off inside knowledge or information. So, perhaps the essentials of the conduct of diplomacy do not change so much after all, neither does the fascination of the career.

Canada looks somewhat different when you see it from abroad. We see our own country both from the inside and as it is seen by people in other countries, and you become extremely conscious of everything that increases the reputation of Canada and anything that could diminish it. The image of Canada as a unity becomes very strong and clear, a country which any man would be proud to serve.

Thanks

Thanks of this meeting were expressed by Mr. E. B. Jolliffe, Q.c., a Director of the Empire Club.