The organization of the modern Foreign Office machine is not elaborate. The Secretary of State has immediately beneath him a Permanent Under-Secretary, himself assisted by four or five Assistant Under-Secretaries, each responsible for a group of departments—these are civil servants; and, in a different category, a Parliamentary Under-Secretary to help him in his business with and communications to the two Houses of Parliament; this post is held by a politician below Cabinet rank. At the side of the departments of the Office there is a small band (now four in number) of legal advisers, for many of the questions which we have to handle are closely concerned with international law.
The Consular Department deals with the administration of the British Consular Service and the personal affairs of British subjects in all foreign countries, These affairs are of infinite variety, and may range from the repatriation of a distressed British elephant to an important claim against a foreign government arising out of a denial of justice.
The Treaty Department and its subsidiaries, the Passport Office and the Passport Control Department, deal with a host of activities, ranging from treaty formalities to the repatriation of foreign lunatics; questions of ceremonial precedence, nationality, marriages abroad, and other conundrums of international law, not forgetting the administration of the Kings Regulations governing the wearing of foreign orders by British subjects, which has been a jealously guarded Royal prerogative since that far-off day when, it is said, Queen Elizabeth, confronted by two of her courtiers resplendent in the insignia of decorations conferred upon them by a foreign monarch, exclaimed in regal anger: "My dogs shall wear no collars but mine own!" and threw them into prison.
Opportunity Given Young Men of Ability Every opportunity is now given to young men to show their ability. Formerly their scope was far more restricted, The junior expresses his opinion as to the action which should be adopted, and passes the paper up to the oficial above him, who will then' consider it and ordinarily send it to the head of his department. Most papers stop there; but the more important, of course, go higher still—to an Assistant Under-Secretary, to the Permanent Under-Secretary, and the most important of all to the Secretary of State himself.
In the last half-century the business of the Foreign Office has greatly expanded. In 1902, it received some 54,000 despatches, telegrams, and letters; in 1938 the number of receipts was nearly a quarter of a million, and the outgoing communications amounted to. at least five times the number of incoming papers.
The Foreign Office and the Diplomatic Service are now one, A young man on his entry goes backwards and forwards between the two for a good many years. The advantages of his amalgamation are clear; while in the Office, he sees how despatches from abroad are handled; which are considered of value, and which belong to limbo; and then when he goes abroad he knows how and what to report home. It is a curious profession, because it is the only one of which people outside are so often convinced that they know more than those inside.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.