Ways of Living.

Alexandra Herald and Central Otago Gazette, Issue 423, 2 June 1904, Page 7

Ways of Living.

AMBASSADORS' PAY AND WORK, jgjiJRHE most secret o£ all secret ■jhwte maehiaery is the inner mechanism J?he grey building in the come.? of the quadrangle to the south of Dowsing Street preserves ever an outward calm. The pigeons flatter noiselessly up and down and pick up the crumbs thrown them by feome passing King's Messenger or by one of the calm, almost sleepylooking, but ever alert detectives who lounge in the shadowy corners. Now and then a one-horse brougham will draw up, and its occupant, aaually an undistinguished-looking gentleman in silk hat and f rook coat, will walk up the broad front steps of the Foreign Office and disappear. Making History.

But beneath all this exterior calm, behind this mask of innocence and commonplaceness, great world-struggles are being fought, and those pigeons, if they only knew it, have witnessed the coming and going of makers of history. Let us take a peep behind the walla into the curious workings of the Foreign Office. Her e is a large staff of men saturated with foreign languages, the terms of treaties with foreign governments, and the geography of all parts of the world. At the head, for political party purposes, is Lord Lansdowne, Secretary of State fot Foreign Affairs, but at the real head of this huge diplomatic machine is the man who knows more about its wheels and its wheels within wheels, and, what is, perhaps, more important, knows more about the workings of the wheels in the diplomacy of other governments than any other man living This is an extremely quiet, most reticent, and most monu-mentally-discreet gentleman in spectacles. He is known as Sir Thomas Sanderson, G.C.8., K.C.M.G. He entered the portals of the Foreign Office in 1859, and has hardly emerged, except to walk, quietly and alone, down the back steps and across the wide waste of the Horse Guards Parade to lunch. Dividins the Work. The title of thia chief engineer, this master of the strange and amazingly-compli-cated machinery of the Foreign Office, is ' Permanent Under-Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs'—and there is more than ordinary meaning in the • Permanent.' He has under him a large staff of secretaries, linguists, and precis-writers; and each of the principal portions of the world has its own particular experts. Some keep their eyes upon the mass of lies and the diplomatic despatches that come from Constantinople, others are soaked in the lore of the everlasting Behring Sea Fisheries Dispute, another section knows all about the famous Schomburgk Line, while others trifle with such commonplaces as the Treaty of Berlin and the latest move of the Triple Alliance, the last adumbration of the ugly shadow of the Bussian Bear on the frontier of India, and the newest tricks of the Powers in the Yang-teze Valley. The chief men working under the eye of the Foreign Minister and Sir Thomas

Sanderson, however, axe the British Ambassadors and Ministers abroad. Compared -with these the other denizens of the Foreign Office are but accountants, clerks, and tabulators. The most delicate, moat secret, most important work of all is the work of the ambassador, He is the main shaft in the machinery of diplomacy, and for the most part he is a shaft of the finest hardened steel, Ambassadors' Salaries.

So, in describing the machinery of diplomacy the main duty is to treat of the ambassador and his work.

The pay which an ambassador or minister ig given out of the taxes of the country will show something of his importance. The British Minister at Buenos Ayres, for instanoe, receives £3,000 a year, with an addition of .£4OO for house rent and an 'office allowance' of £2OO. Our Ambassador at Vienna receives the princely salary of £B,OOO a year, and the secretary of his Embassy receives £BSO, Our representative, even at such a small post as Bio de Janeiro, is paid £4.000, with £SOO for house rent Sir Ernest Satow (at Pekln) has £5,000 a year ; Sir F. Lascelies (at Berlin), £8000; Sir E. H. Egertbn (4thens), £3,500; Lord Carrie (Borne), £7,000; Sir Claude Mac Donald (Tokio, Japan), £4.000; Sir A. Nicolson (Tan,giers, Morocco), £2,000; Sir Arthur Hardinge (Teheran, Persia), £5 000; Sir C. S Scott (St. Petersburg), £7 800; Sir H. M. Duraad (Madrid), £5 500; Sit H. N. O'Conor (Constantinople), £8000; Sir Michael Herbert (Washington, US.A), £6500, while our Ambassador at Paris, the holder of the blue riband of the Diplomatic Service, receives the superb salary of £9,000 a year, and lives in one of the finest palaces of the beautiful capital Liy* of ah Ambassador. These are some of the diplomatic prizes. What is the work P It must be said, to the credit of our ambassadors and ministers, that, broadly speaking, they are engaged in a constant endeavour to preserve peace. It was said by a distinguished personage many years ago that the duty of an ambassador was 'to he abroad for the benefit of his conntry!' It might, perhaps, be more truly said (and in a very different sense from that in which the phrase is usually employed) that an ambassador is a man who has 'left his country for his country's good.' Plating the Gamh. The ambassador's work is to represent his country, and secure as far as possible its best interests in the country to which he is accredited. While there he is looked upon as a guest of the foreign State in which his duties lie, and many curious privileges are accorded him, but, at the same time, he has constantly to look upon the government with which he comes into daily contact as a body in opposition, so to speak, to himself and his own country, a force which might at any moment be pitted against him in the securing of the prize in some sndden and delicate diplomatic struggle. The tiniest movement of an eyebrow, the slightest change of tone, the faintest gesture are often the only things he has an opportunity of noting when presenting a certain question or his government's view of a given problem to the foreign secretary in the government to which he is sent; for one of the arts of diplomacy is to veil one's emotions, to hide surprise or annoyance, to avoid any sign which may assist one's adversary to guess the intentions—the usually hidden and secret schemes—of the government which one represents. 'Diplomacy.' "

The art of diplomacy is often the art of using words with such consummate skill as to leave a loophole for future escape from the obligations which the ambassador often bas to seem to ester into with pleasure at the pressure of a foreign power.He has to speak various languages, mostly French—for that charming tongue is still the chiel diplomatic mediums-he has to compile treaties to the best advantage of his country, to present an identical note or open pourparlers, ok create an entente cordiale, or hand in an ultimatum with an almost unvarying polish and oharm of demeanour. He has to seem, in the words of Hamlet, to < take Fortune's ouffeta and rewards with equal thanks.'