Storm Signals : More Undiplomatic Diaries, 1962-1971 (9781551996806) Read online

  ALSO BY CHARLES RITCHIE

  An Appetite for Life

  The Siren Years

  Diplomatic Passport

  My Grandfather’s House

  Copyright © 1983 Charles Ritchie

  Originally published in hardcover by Macmillan of Canada 1983 McClelland & Stewart trade paperback edition published 2001 by arrangement with The Estate of Charles Ritchie

  All rights reserved. The use of any part of this publication reproduced, transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, or stored in a retrieval system, without the prior written consent of the publisher – or, in case of photocopying or other reprographic copying, a licence from the Canadian Copyright Licensing Agency – is an infringement of the copyright law.

  National Library of Canada cataloguing in publication data

  Ritchie, Charles, 1906-1995

  Storm signals : more undiplomatic diaries, 1962-1971

  eISBN: 978-1-55199-680-6

  1. Ritchie, Charles, 1906-1995 – Diaries. 2. Diplomats – Canada – Diaries.

  I. Title.

  FC616.R58A3 2001 327.71′0092 C2001-930637-7

  F1034.R56A37 2001a

  We acknowledge the financial support of the Government of Canada through the Book Publishing Industry Development Program for our publishing activities. We further acknowledge the support of the Canada Council for the Arts and the Ontario Arts Council for our publishing program.

  McClelland & Stewart Ltd.

  The Canadian Publishers

  75 Sherbourne Street

  Toronto, Ontario

  M5A 2P9

  www.mcclelland.com

  v3.1

  To my niece Elizabeth Ritchie

  and to the memory of

  Elizabeth Bowen

  CONTENTS

  Cover

  Other Books by This Author

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Dedication

  Preface

  Washington, 1962–1966

  London, 1967–1971

  Diplomatic Attitudes

  Epilogue

  PREFACE

  This will be the fourth volume of these undiplomatic diaries. It covers the years 1962 to 1971, beginning with my appointment as Ambassador to Washington and ending when I quit the post of High Commissioner to London and said goodbye to the Foreign Service.

  I should from the start warn the reader what not to expect. This is not an historical memoir or a study of the role of Canada in international affairs. Recently a spate of memoirs and studies of this period have appeared. Some are valuable contributions to history – some less so. All were written with the wisdom of hindsight which is denied the diarist.

  As a boy I wrote, “I prefer diaries to memoirs. They are less made up afterwards.” They are also less flattering to the ego of the author. It is a temptation to revise the record when one comes across opinions about people and events which have since proved to be wrong. That temptation has to be resisted. Also, one does not want to hurt the feelings of the living or cause distress to the friends and relatives of the dead. Yet if one irons out all pungency of comment the sanitized text becomes so bland as to be unreadable. The only real answer to the problem would be for the diarist to die before publication or for those mentioned in the diary to die before him – either seems an extreme solution.

  This record is only a footnote to History. Yet History, if not at the centre of the stage, is always in the wings, for the diarist played a small part on the fringes of the drama. Politics dominated the Washington years, and politicians – good, bad, and indifferent – come and go throughout the story. So too do my diplomatic colleagues. Diplomats are not a particularly popular breed and my old profession, like all professions, has its trivial, sometimes ludicrous, side, but most of its practitioners are hard-headed, humane, and tolerant people who devote much of their energies to the peaceful solution of intractable international problems and the prevention of violent international collisions. As to our own Foreign Service, it contains some of the best brains and most devoted public servants in our country.

  Though the framework of this journal is that of the diplomatic career, the diaries themselves are highly personal. The scenes and people appearing in them are an oddly assorted company, not chosen in order of importance or according to the rules of protocol. Why else does the diabolical dachshund Popski usurp space which should be reserved for his betters? Why does the snapshot of an eccentric encountered by accident replace the portrait of a friend whom I saw every day?

  In this book statesmen, or would-be statesmen, rub shoulders with authors, society hostesses; old friends reappear and a younger generation begins to enter on the stage; the scenes shift from Embassy life in London, Washington, and Paris to the streets of Ottawa and the south shore of Nova Scotia. It is a peculiar book because it reflects the changing moods of the writer, ranging from gloom and nostalgia to exhilaration and amusement, written from day to day, sometimes from hour to hour. We diarists are peculiar people; we may appear harmless, yet we can be dangerous. We write things down, awkward things sometimes, indiscreet things, things better forgotten. We should be banned. No doubt we soon will be, for we have no union or lobby to defend us. Diarists are by definition non-joiners; theirs is not a group activity. Our only plea in defence might be that we find Life so interesting that we are not willing to see it slip between our fingers without leaving a trace behind.

  WASHINGTON

  1962–1966

  After four years as Permanent Representative to the United Nations I left New York on April 27, 1962, to go as Canadian Ambassador to Washington. My appointment there took place at a time of strained and worsening relationship between the Kennedy administration and the government of Prime Minister Diefenbaker. I had been chosen as Ambassador at the urging of the Secretary of State for External Affairs, Howard Green, and after a prolonged period of indecision on the part of the Prime Minister as to the best candidate for the job. I hardly knew Mr. Diefenbaker personally, and my interview with him prior to my appointment was of the most cursory kind. Howard Green, on the other hand, I knew well. I had worked very closely with him in my capacity as Permanent Representative to the United Nations and I had developed a respect for his ability and integrity, and a personal affection for him. I had serious misgivings myself about my suitability for the Washington post, principally on the grounds that I had not enough knowledge of the trade and economic issues between our two countries. However, the outgoing Ambassador, Arnold Heeney, sought to encourage me in every way possible, and this, combined with Howard Green’s confidence, overcame any hesitations I might have had.

  To be an ambassador in a capital when relations between your own government and the government to which you are accredited are bad, and getting worse, is always a tricky situation and is a difficult hand to play. I had spent happy years in my youth as Third Secretary in the (then) Canadian Legation in Washington. I had many friends there. So my wife Sylvia and I were warmly welcomed, and there was not the faintest reflection, in the hospitality with which we were greeted, of the clouds on the political horizon. However, pleasant as this was, it had little to do with the realities of politics. I had only been in Washington a very short time before this was brought home to me. The occasion was a private party at which the Secretary of State, Dean Rusk, was present. To my surprise, he took the occasion to launch an attack on the policies and attitude of the Canadian government in such forthright language that Walter Lippmann, who was among the guests, said to me afterwards tha
t in all his experience he had never heard such terms used to an ambassador about his government. There could be no doubt in my mind, or in anyone else’s, of the personal quality of the President’s dislike of Mr. Diefenbaker, whom he regarded with supercilious aversion and whose policies seemed to him to have an anti-American bias. Nor could there be any doubt that the Prime Minister reciprocated these sentiments. In Mr. Diefenbaker’s case there was anger and irritation, particularly with the President’s somewhat arrogant and offhand style. More profound was Mr. Diefenbaker’s suspicion, which deepened into conviction, that the President was in close sympathy with the Canadian Leader of the Opposition, Lester B. Pearson, and would not hesitate to interfere in our domestic affairs to bring about a change of government.

  For an embassy to be in disfavour with the White House at a time when the office of President was at the height of its power and influence was a disconcerting experience. The word had swiftly percolated down into every department of the United States Administration. As an example, I recall that when, while discussing a minor tariff item, I expressed a differing view from that of the American official involved, he replied that he had the authority of the President for his interpretation and asked me whether I “intended to call the President of the United States a liar.”

  Despite these strains and stresses, my personal relationship with the State Department and White House officials remained cordial, even friendly. They seemed to regard me more in sorrow than in anger, and their attitude implied – and sometimes more than implied – that I could not, as a reasonable man, be at heart in sympathy with the policies of the Diefenbaker government. While this eased personal relations, it was sometimes more difficult to deal with than outright hostility.

  With the Secretary of State, despite his initial outburst, I was on good terms. I respected him as a devoted public servant who had his own difficulties with the White House, and I admired the clarity and precision with which he could outline a case. I enjoyed the earthy sense of humour which underlay his Buddha-like exterior. He struck me as a first-rate executant, rather than an originator, of policy. As he was to demonstrate later during the Vietnam war, he, like many Washington officials, was totally impervious to any idea or suggestion which did not originate in Washington. The United States version of consultation with their allies meant listening patiently to their views and then informing them of American decisions.

  McGeorge Bundy1 at the White House was always available to me, and at times of crisis I would see him two or three times a week. It was a delight to encounter that steely intelligence, that far-ranging competence, and that sharp wit. He was also invaluable as a mirror of the President’s moods and methods.

  28 April 1962. Washington.

  The first day in Washington. Outside the window in the garden the cherry blossoms, pear blossoms, and magnolias are in the perfection of early bloom. A sturdy Italian gardener mops his brow in the heat. The overgrown box hedges scent the air. Inside, a cheerful, polite little Spanish maid trots in and out with breakfast trays. The house exudes the confident, quiet charm of a much-loved and admired Beauty. In all this paradise only Popski is vile. He barks edgily among the bird song and an eye has to be kept on him lest he pee on the acres of pale-coloured carpet.

  29 April 1962.

  Harold Macmillan is here on a visit to President Kennedy. He met with the Commonwealth Representatives this afternoon. He is certainly my favourite Prime Minister. Talking of Russia he said, “I pin my faith on them gradually getting more like other people, more and more wanting the same things, so that over generations the differences between us and them will narrow. Meanwhile, do not yield to them but avoid picking quarrels.” I hope that this pragmatic point of view is the right one but I am far from confident. Of the Common Market he said, “If we do not join the Common Market, do you imagine that in twenty years’ time there will be any question of the President of the United States going to the trouble, as today, of consulting the Prime Minister of Great Britain about anything? Why should he do so? We should have dwindled into a small, unimportant island. Europe with its tens of millions would go on without us.”

  Mike and Maryon Pearson at dinner last night. Mike looks in fighting trim. He does not expect to win the coming election but he hopes to reduce the government’s majority or to prevent them from getting an absolute majority.

  7 May 1962.

  This prolonged period of waiting to present my Letters of Credence to the President is beginning to get on my nerves and I am wondering whether this delay is deliberate on the part of the White House. Max Freedman, the Winnipeg journalist,2 says that we are in danger of a state of affairs in which American officials groan when they see a Canadian coming. They think from experience that we are going to grouse over one of our grudges. (As they have a grudge a minute from one ally or another, they must be getting hardened to it.) Max looks back to a time when the Americans turned to us for advice, when we discussed common problems, when Dean Acheson3 dropped in to this Embassy to compare notes with our Ambassador, Hume Wrong. Now we drop in to protest, and always in the name of Canadian interests, not on the assumption of shared responsibilities. We are reluctant to admit that we are involved with the United States and have adopted an attitude of some detachment, which we associate both with independence and with moral rectitude. Of course no one wants us to agree with every American policy, but there should be a dialogue based on common inescapable commitment. By all means let us stand up to them, but let us talk to them rather than protest to them. Look at the British. Ever since Suez they have been diligently cultivating at every level their contacts with the United States. What an absurdity it would be now to claim that Canada is a bridge between the United Kingdom and the United States. We are the odd man out and it is we who have put ourselves in this position, not only by the content of our policy but by the manner of it. Meanwhile this southern spring weather goes on and I wait day after day in this silent and beautiful house with its cool vistas, mirrored reflections, and blond carpets which muffle sound. From the garden rises the scent of box – strong, sweet, and sexy. It blooms in abandon in what was once a formal rose garden with paved paths and disciplined box hedges; at some time the box got out of control and now luxuriates like a jungle of the Amazon. There are flowers everywhere and all in bloom at once – cherry blossoms, magnolia, azalea, wisteria – and in the Judas tree scarlet cardinals flashing from branch to branch. All this is too much after the stone-and-steel landscape of New York. My brain feels drugged and drowned in all this languid sweetness, this trilling of birds and splashing of water in the goldfish pool.

  Popski may feel the same. He has just been sick on the upstairs carpet from an indigestible meal of magnolia blossoms.

  26 May 1962.

  I presented my Letters of Credence to President Kennedy. His reception of me, while perfectly civil, was, I thought, distinctly cool, and I came away with the impression that this reflected his attitude towards the Canadian government and particularly towards Mr. Diefenbaker. He seemed deliberately to be creating “a distance.” The conversation was routine and with longish pauses. During one of these the President half rose from the rocking chair in which he was sitting, stretched out his arms, and said, “Shoo, shoo.” For a moment I was frozen in my place. The thought passed through my mind that I might be the first ambassador in history to be shooed out of the White House. I didn’t see that behind the sofa on which I was sitting, coming through the French windows out of the garden, was his young daughter, the little girl Caroline, leading her pet pony. They hastily backed out of the window into the garden but my reaction will give some idea of the uncomfortable coolness of the atmosphere created. What impression did I have of the President? I had not quite expected the waxy pallor of his skin. I felt that the man and the image coincided with uncanny precision, as though he was indeed a TV image rather than a human being. Even during our strained conversation his calculating, live intelligence was clear, as was the cutting edge of his will and the j
auntiness of his manner.

  28 May 1962.

  My grandmother, Eliza Almon, was a girl of eighteen in the year 1838 when she wrote her diary, which I have just been reading. Her life was outwardly narrow and funless. She was not an adventurous or pleasure-loving girl and, as she had no eye for character, landscape, or anecdote, her diary is damn dull except in one particular. As to her daily existence, she lived at Rosebank, then a country house on the outskirts of Halifax. The property is now engulfed in streets, though the old stone gates with their rose emblem remain. It was a life of reading, studying French and Italian, sewing, helping with the “housekeeping,” going to church twice on Sunday, and walking over to a neighbouring house, Oatlands, on the North-West Arm, to see a female friend. Her reading list is wide for a miss in Nova Scotia in those days. It includes Chateaubriand, Byron, Scott, Ford (The Witch of Edmonton), Fanny Burney, Disraeli, volumes of French memoirs, and of course Shakespeare, but the real drama of her diary is her spiritual life. Church attendance and good works did not interest her. It was the inner life that absorbed her, and she wrote that she would “more than any temporal evil that could befall me fear being left to the Form of godliness without its life and support.” This theme grows in strength and intensity as the journal goes on. It was to be the theme of her life, and she shared this passionately personal religion with her cousin James. When they wrote to each other it was to discuss the sermons they had heard. When she married him she persuaded him to give up the world in the form of a promising career at the Bar and become an unhappy and ill-suited evangelical country clergyman. She died of diphtheria at the age of forty-two, leaving my father and his brother and sisters motherless children. After her death she was always spoken of by the family as a Christian, selfless saint, but my poor grandfather went on fulfilling his duties as a clergyman without heart, enthusiasm, or interest – perhaps without faith?