29 December 1962.
Went to St. John’s Church (the old small church opposite the White House) – poinsettias, carols, and comfortable pews. That old tart Mrs. X was sitting in front of us with a black velvet bow affixed to her doubtfully-auburn hair. Episcopalianism is a long way from existentialism. Then Sylvia and I, accompanied by Popski, went for a married walk. How I do love Sylvia. I can see her now through the window, trundling about the garden in her beige coat with the fur collar. I can hear her scraping earth out of a flower pot and the knocking of the trowel against the pot’s surface. It is a mild winter day with a spring sky and some failing snow still on the ground. The birds in the garden are bustling. I feel an after-church drowsiness coming over me and could fall, like Alice in Wonderland, down a deep, deep well.
Yes, I did fall asleep and now it is three o’clock on Sunday afternoon, the day and hour of my birth and always the low ebb of the week for me. But I must bestir myself – Susan Mary Alsop and Dick Howland are coming to tea.
Later: It was very pleasant, tea and cinnamon toast before the library fire, and with Dick and Susan Mary a rich and varied diet of Washington gossip – political, social, with the arts thrown in.
21 January 1963. Corpus Christi, Texas.
This non-stop tour through Texas has addled my wits. I have given the same spiel in every town – “how happy I am to set foot on Texan soil for the first time,” “the links between Canada and Texas,” how “Canada is big and so is Texas.” Well, there is the famous hospitality, the good nature and friendliness of the people which no one but a crustaceous old boor could despise. Then one is always appreciating, going “ooh, aah, how big it is, how beautiful.” No one here ever says anything critical about their own town, each rejoices in living in the best community in Texas (or the world!). This perpetual self-praise rises hourly to Heaven, like incense. Texas is another dimension; it is a cult, too, from which no dissent can be tolerated. It has its converts, not all born Texans. The tall clean-cut young man with the cowboy hat and the Texan accent who has been showing us around Dallas is one of these. When I asked him what part of Texas he came from, his accent seemed to change as he replied, with some embarrassment, “As a matter of fact, I come from Prince Edward Island.” The most frightening city in Texas is Dallas, which consists of tall office buildings and hotels entirely surrounded by mile upon mile of carparks. In one direction are the segregated homes of the rich, in another the segregated homes of the poor. The heart of the city has been eliminated. There are no side streets, no small shops, and nothing familiar to attach to. All the inhabitants I have encountered have the same absolutely smooth surface of relentless good humour and optimism. Yet I suppose someone in Dallas must have time to read, to idle, to mope, to be critical and bad-tempered.
This is the Bible belt, grown rich yet clinging to its values. The oil world is of course an international fraternity. These people are as much at home in Saudi Arabia and Iran as they are in Calgary or Dallas. They fly round the world at the drop of a hat, yet they remain closed to all alien ideas, tone deaf to outside influences. They carry the assurance of their own superiority with them wherever they go. And it is a many-sided sense of superiority. They feel superior in health, techniques, hygiene, and morals, and certainly superior in friendliness.
The Texans I have met distrust and despise the following: the President of the United States, Washington and all its works, New York City and all its inhabitants, the eastern United States in general, foreigners, Catholics, Irish, Mexicans, and blacks, and, as a combination of all that they distrust most, the United Nations. I keep trying to steer the conversation away from the fact that I have served in the United Nations, as any discussion of that organization leads straight onto the shoals, and I am not here on a conversion mission.
Yet everywhere we go – kindness, courtesy, warmth of welcome. This courtesy of theirs is not only on the surface; they will take trouble, do things which are tiresome for them and which put out their lives, and then say, with real warmth, “It is our pleasure.”
25 January 1963.
How strange it is always to be seeing one’s country from abroad as I do. One becomes very conscious, perhaps over-conscious, of the showing that Canada makes in the eyes of others. Perhaps one begins to care too much about what others think. Also, one builds up a sort of ideal Canada in one’s own mind which may have increasingly little to do with reality. What depresses me is the thick coating of self-congratulation which covers every Canadian official statement. This eternal boasting to Canadians about their own achievements when heard abroad sounds painfully embarrassing, especially when combined with a sort of Rotarian optimism about the future in which all Canadian politicians of every party indulge. As for the material with which the Department of External Affairs supplies us for dissemination to the press, it is headed straight for the editorial wastepaper basket. Much of it consists of the texts of speeches (frequently out of date) by Canadian Ministers, aimed at their own constituents and with no relation whatever to American interests and concerns.
I am lucky to have Basil Robinson as No. 2 in this Mission. He has a good tough mind and great sensitivity to the currents of politics, which he has learned in a hard school during his service in the Prime Minister’s Office. And he has a passion for integrity and fairness. In addition, I feel him to be a friend and an enjoyable companion. But I think he has his own dry, ruthless yardstick of judgement in which sentiment, I believe, plays little part. At any rate, he avoids making me feel that I am a schoolmaster who has neglected to do his homework and is lagging badly behind the cleverer boys in the class, besides being morally somewhat questionable. This is an attitude conveyed by some of the smugger members of our Department. I find it tiresome. Politicians are infuriated by it in their dealings with the Department. Basil and Ross Campbell are the boys to watch. Ross plays things with more dash – tough little bird. I wonder how he’ll end up. He is extremely fertile in policy expedients. Basil is used to the winds of politics but, as a good civil servant, he holds onto his hat in a political gale. Ross might throw his hat over the windmill.
In order to make the following entries comprehensible I should recall that on January 25, 1963, the Prime Minister made a statement in the House of Commons in which he made it clear that he did not regard the storage of nuclear weapons on Canadian soil as part of our NATO commitment. At the same time he indicated that his understanding of the Nassau Agreement, reached a month earlier by President Kennedy and Prime Minister Harold Macmillan of Britain, was a justification for a few months’ more delay in arming the Canadian weapons system. On January 30 the Department of State in Washington issued a press release challenging the Prime Minister’s interpretation of the nuclear negotiations which had been taking place in secret between the Canadian and United States governments. The Prime Minister was infuriated by what he saw, to use his own words, as “an unwarranted intrusion in Canadian affairs.” I had been finding the delays, ambiguities, and indecision of the Diefenbaker government on the subject of nuclear weapons on Canadian soil not easy to explain and defend in Washington. But the heavy-handed and overbearing action of the State Department in lecturing the Canadian government in a public press release seemed to me intolerable. While the State Department protested, with some reason, that they had been obliged to put the record straight over the Nassau Agreement, there could be no doubt in my mind that they welcomed this opportunity to injure the government of Mr. Diefenbaker. The State Department press release had been approved by McGeorge Bundy at the White House. Later it was said that the President regarded this as a blunder on Bundy’s part and that he had never himself seen the text of the press release. However, knowing Bundy’s political sensitivity and closeness to the President, I considered that he never would have approved the press release unless he knew that it echoed his master’s voice.
On February 5, 1963, the Diefenbaker government was defeated in the House of Commons on a non-confidence motion opposing the government’s n
uclear policy.
Meanwhile, I had been recalled to Ottawa as an indication of the government’s displeasure and as a rebuke to the United States. The Prime Minister and Howard Green were anxious to prolong my absence from Washington, perhaps for a period of weeks, as a further indication of their displeasure with the United States government. I took the line in conversation with them that my absence from Washington would not be particularly shattering to the United States government, and I was allowed to return to Washington.
6 February 1963.
Just back from Ottawa. The government was defeated last night. I have been living politics for the last week and feel drained and left without a private thought or feeling after the continuous excitement of this crisis. What a substitute politics are for private life, and what an appalling inner emptiness and surrounding stillness must descend on the politician who is finally and irrevocably OUT. The road ahead in Canadian-American relations is sure to be full of slippery paths and perhaps some precipitous drops. It may also mean the end of my tenure of the Washington Embassy as a small by-product of the general confusion and débâcle.
Oh, those hours in the Prime Minister’s Office with Mr. Diefenbaker and Howard Green, two old men, old cronies, old scarred soldiers of political battles. It was indeed an education for me. I had arrived in Ottawa in the hope of repairing the damage caused to the relations between our two countries, but I soon realized that the government was not interested in patching things up and hoped to win an election on the issue of United States interference in our affairs.
In Ottawa during this crisis it was twenty-eight degrees below zero, with winds blowing the icy snow round the corners and buttresses of the Gothic buildings on the Hill. Hurrying figures, their coat collars turned up, grasping briefcases, their heads down against the wind, pushed forward to Cabinet conclaves and parliamentary sessions. The whole scene was shrouded in the falling snow, and further mists hung over the river and the airport, completing the effect of isolation from the outer world which I felt so strongly in Ottawa, the peculiar capital of a peculiar people. Then to come back to this bland and sunny scene, this classical architecture, the wide-spanning bridges and broad perspectives, this illusion of rationalism. Apart from my opinions as to the issues at stake, my feelings are very tangled. While I disapprove entirely of the manufactured anti-Americanism of the government, yet deep down I feel satisfaction at hearing the Canadian government finally lash out at the omniscience and unconscious arrogance of Washington, and I am not immune to that fever of irritation with the United States government which at home could become a national rage – could, but I do not think it will.
10 February 1963.
Dear Oatsie Leiter, that generous-natured beauty who brings a breeze of high spirits into this town, wanted me to meet her friend, a political lady. We met, but it did not work. She engaged me on the subject of the Common Market, on which I have just written a long dispatch. The conversation was for me like a lesson out of school hours. I stopped listening and looked. Her pink face was eroded by many suns in Swiss skiing resorts or the winds that blow on yachts in Southampton Harbour.
11 February 1963.
The government seems to be falling to pieces, leaving the Prime Minister more and more isolated in his suspicions, narrow stratagems, and sterile prejudices. How will it all turn out? Where shall we find ourselves after the election on April 8? And, incidentally, where shall I find myself?
Diana Cooper10 is here on a visit and as usual I find myself talking more frankly to her about my dilemma than to anyone, excepting, of course, Sylvia. It gives me a sense of stimulus to feel that that irreverent, irrepressible Beauty is next door. She is withstanding the siege of old age with all flags flying. I said to her that I thought I had got to the stage in life of throwing in my hand, ceasing to seek for adventure, and “settling down.” “Don’t,” she cried immediately, “don’t do that,” fixing me with her fabulous eyes. “I thought you might advise it,” I said. “What, me? Never!” said with immense energy. She has been lunching with the President at the White House. He asked her whether she thought that the loss during the First World War of so many gifted young men who had been the circle of her friends had altered and weakened British political life. She said no.
Today we lunched with Mr. and Mrs. Phillips of the Phillips Gallery, my favourite art gallery. As it is small, one can sit down, and, as in no other art gallery in the world, one is allowed to smoke. I am very much drawn to the Phillipses. He is a bald, rather tired millionaire, with a wedge-shaped head. Mrs. Phillips is a painter and a gallery politician. Her face is worn, not by wind and weather but by exposure to masterpieces. The Lippmanns were there. Walter Lippmann, ever since I have been here, has been a wonderful friend to me. In wisdom, experience, and knowledge of the world he is head and shoulders above most journalists and politicians and, of course, ambassadors! Just before lunch there was a startling crack and the bottom fell out of the glass which Sylvia was holding in her hand. Bourbon and assorted fruits gushed onto the exquisite Aubusson carpet.
12 February 1963.
I am feeling the strain of these last weeks and completely lost my temper with a political lady next to whom I was sitting at lunch. She had been described to me as “a perfect darling,” but I found her a perfect pest and was irritated by some remark she made reflecting on the Canadian government which normally I would have passed over without notice. Also, I keep asking myself whether I could have avoided this crisis if I had foreseen the State Department press release in my encounters with Mac Bundy. But I do not think this would have made any difference.
The feeling of happiness that I experience in dreaming seems a kind of moral or social weightlessness and, with it, a gaiety, sometimes hilarity, which is, as they say, “out of this world.” This weightlessness is like that shown in ideal pictures of blessed beings floating in clouds, but it does not seem, in the case of my dreams, to be a reward for good works. Dreaming sorrows are morally awakening and enlarge the sympathies. Last night I dreamed of her, with both joy and sorrow.
16 February 1963.
I want to arrange a date for lunch with Dobrynin, the Soviet Ambassador, next week. He and I have lunch every now and then. He is very pleasant company, a genial six-footer, a gleam of humour in the glance behind his rimless spectacles. He is tenacious in argument, shifting his ground but always returning to the point. Our talk has usually turned on the German role in NATO. He speaks of the dangers of renascent German militarism encouraged and supported by the Alliance. I argue that from the Russian point of view Germany in the NATO framework, contained and supported by nations who have themselves had experience of the German aggression, is safer than a revived Germany free of restraints. But I make no headway. It is the American-German linkage that he fears. Perhaps he thinks that Canada might be a softening influence on American policy. If so, he is mistaken. Even if we had such an intention, we would not have the influence.
I had at one time thought of leaving my diaries on my death to my niece Eliza, but why burden the girl with these stale leftovers of a life? Better burn the lot. Eliza is the last of us – no more male Ritchies. The good Lord has decided to discontinue the experiment! She is beautiful and intelligent, subject to gloom, to precipitous moods; has not yet found herself, but with a streak of daring; great charm. I love her and she means more and more to me each year. I am also fascinated by the idea of her future, of what the story of her life will be. I know one thing she will never be – a BORE.
17 February 1963.
I had lunch with my new pal, the Greek Ambassador, Matsas. He is an old aesthete, very astute and also a tremendous old gossip. He has written several enormously long plays, one of which he has lent to me to read. He says that in Europe people say frightful things about their dearest friends – and to them – but go on in friendship, while the Americans never say an unkind word and one can only judge their feuds and hatreds by their significant silences when a name is mentioned.
18 F
ebruary 1963.
Henry Brandon and Nin Ryan here for lunch. Between them they know all the private scandals, inside stories, of Washington politics and society.
I am in the midst of an argument with the Department at home. What a jealous old hippopotamus the Department is, whose service is perfect submission and who never forgets even if she sometimes has to forgive.
Can the Diefenbaker government live on? I can hardly believe so. How much does it count against the government that the press, many – if not most – businessmen, all civil servants and academics are against them? Not perhaps as much as one thinks. Meanwhile, so far as my own reputation is concerned, I have presided over this Embassy during a time of collapse in Canadian-American relations. Some must surely say that I might have done something to prevent the deterioration. My grandfather put an inscription on his second wife’s tombstone: “She did what she could.” Hardly flattering to the lady. I suppose that might be the verdict on my efforts. If there is to be a change, won’t the new government say to themselves, “Let us start with a new man in Washington”? Then what becomes of old Ritchie? Banishment to our mission in Berne? A kind friend said to me the other day, “In this Canadian-American row it’s you I am sorry for.” Well-meant, no doubt, but misplaced. I do not relish being an object of pity.
20 February 1963.
The Breeses here today with their son. They are my oldest friends in this town. Billy I have known since the days when he was in the U.S. Legation (as it then was) in Ottawa. His mother was kind to me when I was a newly arrived Third Secretary in Washington – had me to stay in her house for weeks. Nora is so lovable, warm-hearted, with a quick spontaneous wit all her own. It is a relief from official life to go to their country house, Longview, outside Washington, like a return to a happier, less responsible time in my life. Thank Heaven for the earlier friends made in this city in my youth and who have remained friends – the Ourousoffs, Anne Perin, Cynthia Martin, and a few others. When I am with them, all the competitiveness and one-upmanship that infect Washington seem to fall away.
Storm Signals : More Undiplomatic Diaries, 1962-1971 (9781551996806) Page 4
