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Today a candidate from the outer reaches of British society may make the grade, but not unless he graduates fairly well (a "second class") from a university. Competitive exams usually knock out half the several hundred applicants. The survivors move on to a large old house on London's Chesham Place, once the Czarist Russian embassy, for a harrowing two-day grilling. There, in groups of six, the candidates show their paces before a government official, a psychologist and perhaps a university don. Each is required to make a speech, write a memorandum, chairman a mock committee meeting. The examiners no longer look so closely at clothes or manners. "Of course," said one, "if a man comes in with his hands in his pockets and smoking a cigarette before he has even asked to, he makes a rather poor impression."
As a final test, the candidate writes two brief descriptions of himself—as his severest critic and as his best friend would see him. Then he must give his opinion on how his fellow candidates would do as 1) civil servants, 2) holiday companions. Each year, about 25 survivors are picked as third secretaries in the Foreign Service. Many are already adept in that ancient talent of British diplomacy: the ability to open one's mouth and move one's lips to emit words which give the illusion, but only the illusion, of a reply.
In the field, in the Home Office or in one of the Service's special schools in Slavic, Middle Eastern or Oriental languages, the third secretary gets his diplomatic education. He also learns that his hat should be a black Homburg or a bowler from Lock, his tie subdued, his shoes black. It helps to have a rich wife. For the guidance of young Third Secretary John Bull and his wife, an official in the Foreign Office service four years ago wrote a confidential manual of procedure. It was distributed, but hastily withdrawn. Sample advice:
¶ Avoid silence, especially at dinners. "On sitting down, Mr. Bull should without delay engage one of his two neighbors in conversation ... Be careful not to fall into a vacant stare."
¶ Don't miss funerals. "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 . . ."
No System Is a System. But it was not small talk and tiny deeds that made British diplomacy so successful. In a recent speech, Harold Nicolson, a scholarly ex-veteran of the Foreign Office, got to the point. "Continental critics and admirers," he said, "are united in the awe with which they regard the skill, persistence and flexibility that our diplomatists . . . have manifested in extracting advantage from the passions of less dispassionate countries.
"The less experienced . . . attribute our deft gifts of maneuver to diabolical cunning, masquerading as stupidity. The more experienced realize that . . . our diplomatic tactics [have] been governed by what ... is really an infinite capacity for adjustment to changing proportions of power."