Review: With Great Truth and Respect
| Author | John W. Holmes |
| DOI | 10.1177/002070207503000115 |
| Published date | 01 March 1975 |
| Date | 01 March 1975 |
| Subject Matter | Review |
166
INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL
ing
regularly,
with
undoubted
accuracy,
that
the country
was
in
no
condition
to
fight
a
war.
The
book
affords
as
well
useful
glimpses
of
the
day-to-day
running
of
a
foreign
office.
Cadogan
became
permanent
head of
the
F.O.
at
a
particularly
bad
moment;
and
not
only because
of
the imminent
threat
of
war. His
predecessor,
Sir
Robert Vansittart,
whose views
were
considered
an
embarrassment,
had
been
kicked
upstairs
and
labelled
'Chief
diplomatic
adviser,'
and
his
undefined position
made
difficulties
for
Cadogan
for
years.
There
was
an
even
worse
complica-
tion.
The
inevitable
tendency
of prime
ministers
to
make
their
own
foreign
policy
is
something
foreign
secretaries
and their
staffs
have
to
learn
to
live
with;
but
in the
case
of
Chamberlain
there
was
the
special
problem
that
he
had a
trusted
amateur
adviser
quite
outside
the
foreign
service.
This
was
Sir
Horace
Wilson,
whose
official
title
was
'chief
industrial
adviser.'
There
was
nothing
for Cadogan
to
do
but
accept
the situation:
'if
I had
tried
to
fight
against
him, I
should
only
have
been
removed.'
In
fact,
with
politic
flexibility,
he
estab-
lished
a
good
relationship with
Wilson
and
made
him
an ally.
That,
perhaps,
tells
a good deal
about
Cadogan
and
his
long
and
successful
career.
C.P.
Stacey/University
of
Toronto
WITH
GREAT
TRUTH
AND
RESPECT
Paul
Gore-Booth
London:
Constable
[Toronto:
Longman],
1974,
440pp,
$18.95
That
Westminster
is
the
mother
of
parliaments
is
adequately
rec-
ognized.
That
the
British
Foreign
Office
is
the
mother
of
the diplomacy
of
the Commonwealth
is less
freely
acknowledged
or
even
compre-
hended.
The
principles
and
style
of
the
emergent
Canadian diplomacy
of
the
'forties
and
'fifties
were
largely
adaptations
of
the
British
way.
Even
Canadian
officials
such
as O.D.
Skelton
or Loring
Christie
whose
great
anxiety
was
to
disengage
Canadian
from
British
foreign
policy
nevertheless
preferred
the
British
tradition
of
government.
That
meant
some
bad habits
but
more
that
were
good.
Among
the
virtues
inherited
were
an
intercontinental
perspective
and
a
respect
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