TRADE DIPLOMATS
AFTER-THE-WAR SCHEME. The British Government's scliemo for an enlarged and more efficient Commercial Intelligence Department to foster trade after, the war, which has received the sanction of tlio War Cabinet, _ was recently published in the form of a joint memorandum by the Board of Trade end the Foreign Office, who will be jointly responsible for tlio organisation. Parliamentary control over the Department will be exercised through a.new UnderSecretary, to be attached jointly to the Board of Trade and the Foreign Office. The existing 1 Commercial Intelligence Department connected with the Board of Trade and the Foreign Trade Department of the Foreign Office will be merged. Thero will be a constant interchange of staff hot ween the Department and both the Foreign Office and the Board of Trade. Diplomats' and Consuls in training will serve for a period in the new Department, which will also draw personnel from tho Commercial Attache and Consular Services and from men of outside business experience; and officers of the Trade Commissioner Service will be trained in the Department. An advisory committee of business men will also assist tho Department. The main objoct of tho reconstruction is the collection and diffusion of commercial intelligence for the benefit of JJritish trade, the demands for which, the Board of Trade state, are likely to be very much greater than in the past. A Foreign Office Committee in an appendix to the memorandum state: "We are now committed to a national trade policy which will enter largely into tho conduct of our foreign relations and may dominae them. In future the instructions issued to our diplomatists must place trade and finance in a- different relation to general policy than was tho caso beforo the war. Trade and finanoe can no longer be things apart, outside the sphere of their general diplomatic work. There must bo no divorce between those concerned with the trade side and those concerned in goneral foreign policy, and care must 1)B taken that, in emoluments, promotion, and. ultimate prizes and rewards, this view 1 is put into practice. All the officials of the Foreign Trade Department should bo freely accessible to business men. Members of the Diplomatic Service should be accustomed to the idea that they_ are expected to participate in commercial work as much as in political work, Proficiency in commercial work might well bo made a qualification for the post of Counsellor."
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Dominion, Volume 11, Issue 35, 5 November 1917, Page 5
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401TRADE DIPLOMATS Dominion, Volume 11, Issue 35, 5 November 1917, Page 5
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