The Forgotten Spy

The Forgotten Spy by Nick Barratt

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Authors: Nick Barratt
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precious fortnight has been wasted, our great men having thought that they could settle everything themselves, even to the smallest details, and that such things as committees were childish inventions of the FO [Foreign Office] or of the devil. 71
    Matters went from bad to worse. Territorial committees were set up at the end of January to deal with regional discussions but it wasn’t until27 February that a central territorial committee was established to coordinate discussion across the others. By then, most of the work had been done in isolation. Headlam-Morley observed that:
    The result was that week after week went by, each of the sections continued working by itself and no official arrangement was made for communication and consultation. Practically, owing to the fact that we were working in the same building and living in the same hotel, a great deal of informal and personal consultation took place, but this was at the beginning only very partial and, as far as I could make out, some of the sections – especially the economic and the financial which were of very great importance – continued to work on their own without any consultation or communication with others. 72
    The results were potentially catastrophic. As Nicolson put it:
    We were never for one instant given to suppose that our recommendations were absolutely final. And thus we tended to accept compromises and even to support decisions which we ardently hoped would not, in the last resort, be approved. 73
    Despite a warning from Hardinge against ‘indiscreet talk’ at the Hôtel Majestic, most of the important business was conducted outside the official meetings – over dinners, in the bar or between sessions. In fact, the clerks where Oldham was working were almost certainly more aware of the bigger picture than some of the delegates themselves, as they saw a far wider range of material pass before their desks. However, the Foreign Office delegation felt increasingly frustrated by the lack of consultation, with Sir Eyre Crowe grumbling that:
    I see no object in our collecting reports and information. Nobody wants or uses them, and our pigeonholes are being filled with masses of papers which represent nothing but wastes of energy. 74
    Matters became even worse when the Council of Ten became the Council of Four in March, when Japan dropped out and the leaders of Britain, France, USA and Italy met informally to speed things along – although Italy also walked out over a territorial disagreement. Thus even Balfour was excluded from the decision-making process, with Hardinge complaining that:
    I cannot help feeling that things here are going very badly. The settlement of the terms of peace is now in the hands of the four Prime Ministers who meet and draw up terms without expert advice and without any record being taken of what passes. 75
    The pressure on Hardinge eventually told as he found himself ‘for the first time in my life on the verge of a breakdown from overwork and over strain’. He began to suffer acute insomnia caused by:
    Annoyance at the way I saw the negotiations being conducted here in Paris, regardless of the knowledge and experience of foreign affairs of which there were plenty in the British delegation, but which was absolutely ignored by the negotiators as being inconvenient towards some of their projects. 76
    There was also the stress of keeping things ticking over in London. Balfour commented in early February that, ‘I confess to find it very difficult in all cases whether a subject is being dealt with in London at the Foreign Office or in Paris or both.’ 77 Nicolson wrote in his diary on 17 April: ‘How they must hate us over there, poor people. We never tell them what is happening and we never answer any of their letters.’ 78 This was a pertinent remark; after all, junior staff such as Oldham were faced with the challenge of re-integrating amongst their colleagues in Whitehall after the conference concluded.
    The length of

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