The Foreign Service Journal, July-August 2015

THE FOREIGN SERVICE JOURNAL | JULY-AUGUST 2015 49 And not just a few of the peoples at that, but a round hundred of them—peoples in all conceivable stages of progress from the state of primitive man to the greatest complexities of modern industrial society. And what is involved here is all their aspects: social, economic, cultural, as well as political. It is this vast work of cognition and analysis in which the Foreign Service officer participates so prominently and responsibly. And it is in this case, commensurate—I repeat—in its demands on the mind with the task of academic scholarship and science, that I have personally come to see diplomacy’s escape from the triviality and sterility that recently threatened it, and its elevation to one of the really great and challenging callings of mankind. On the other hand, inspiring as this task may be, we have to recognize that this profession also suffers from certainly inevitable and probably incurable handicaps. The first of these is its congenital remoteness from popular understanding. I doubt that this can ever be fully cured. The external needs of a democratic country are always going to be to some extent in conflict with the internal attitudes and aspirations of its people. To most national societies, the world outside is mainly and normally a nuisance: something that impedes and limits the ability of the people to live the way they would like to live. And the diplomatist cannot help it. His duty is to reflect the realities of this bothersome outside world, whether his fellow- countrymen like it or not. It is his task, very often, to say the unpleasant things—the things people neither want to hear nor like to believe. The achievements of diplomacy are hard for the public to discern. The position of the diplomatist, on the other hand, is such that he constitutes a ready target for blame when things go wrong. The popular concept of the social habit of diplomacy and the nature of diplomatic life continues to arouse jealousies and resentments. In the case of our own country this failure of understanding is particularly great. Somehow or other, to many Americans, the idea of residing permanently [abroad] in a profession at the seat of other governments and of trying patiently to understand these governments and to mediate between their minds and ours is repugnant. These people find such an occupation unmanly. They question its necessity. They cannot understand why anyone should want to do it. They suspect that it leads to a weakening of the attachment to traditional American values. They see in it a loss of true American innocence. This is, of course, a form of provincialism. I think it is declin- ing, as our nation grows in experience and maturity, but we must not expect it to disappear overnight. To some extent, I fear, the professional diplomatist will always remain, in his own country and particularly in this one, a person apart, the bearer of a view of his own country, which, while it does not cause him to love his own country the less, causes him to see it in other ways than his neighbors at home can ever be expected to see it. He is guilty, if you will, of the sin of detachment. In interpreting his fellow- countrymen to others, he will not be able to avoid interpreting them, to some extent, to themselves. And this is something for which they will not readily forgive him, for self-knowledge comes hard. A Serving Profession For these reasons, diplomacy is always going to consist to some extent of serving people who do not know that they are being served, who do not know that they need to be served, who misunderstand and occasionally abuse the very effort to serve them. This, too, is something to which the younger ones of you will have to accustom yourselves. It adds to the strains of the Service; it does not detract from its dignity. On the contrary. Let us take special pride in the fact that we of this profession serve, not because of, but in spite of many of the popular attitudes by which our work is surrounded. It takes a special love of country to pursue, with love, and faith, and cheerfulness, work for which no parades will ever march, no crowds will cheer, no bands will play. The second great drawback of the Foreign Service seems to me to be the fact that it so often is, or can so easily become, an unhealthy mode of life—unhealthy in the sheer physical and nervous sense. It does involve, and always will involve an intensity of social entertainment which goes far beyond what the human frame, and particularly the human gastro-intestinal tract, was ever meant to endure. In many instances normal exercise and recreation are hard to find. It is a life of many petty anxieties and frustrations, but of few visible achievements. The Diplomacy yields to no other profession in the demands it places on the capacity for scientific analysis and creative thought.