The Permanent Under-Secretary of State: A Brief History of the Office and its Holders

Few Permanent Under-Secretaries have received a more favourable press from the historians of their day than Sir Eyre Crowe. Even fewer have earned more praise and affection from those who served under them. Crowe, whose long career in the Office spanned forty years and culminated in his appointment as PUS in November 1920, was rarely without his critics or rivals. But in 1932 George Peabody Gooch and Harold Temperley, the Editors of the British Documents on the Origins of the War, observed that it was impossible to read Crowe's memoranda 'without receiving the impression that they [were] the utterances of a man of uncommon powers of mind and capacity to take wide views when immersed in disputes of the moment'.

The son of Joseph Crowe, the British Consul at Leipzig, and his German wife, Crowe received his schooling in Germany and was eighteen when he first visited England in 1882 to start studying for the Foreign Office examination. There, impecunious in Wimbledon, he struggled to overcome his imperfect knowledge of English. When in 1885 Lord Granville was able to offer him a junior clerkship in the Office, Crowe informed his father in a letter which betrayed his still uncertain grasp of the idiom of his adopted land, 'I am to have an appointment is that not so?' Family ties, which were reinforced when in 1903 he married his widowed cousin, Clema von Bonin, kept Crowe in close touch with German politics and society. He could count amongst his relatives two German admirals, one of whom became wartime Chief of the German Naval Staff, and a Prussian general.

In later years he was to suffer for these German connexions and when in March 1918 a hostile and xenophobic mob of suffragettes descended on his home in Chelsea demanding his dismissal, he loaded a pistol for his wife's protection. All this was particularly ironic since Crowe's consistent determination to resist what he perceived as the threat posed to Britain's imperial security by the ill-defined but all pervasive ambitions of Wilhelmine Germany, and the pressure he as Assistant Under-Secretary put on Grey in the summer of 1914 to range Britain alongside France and Russia in opposition to Germany, earned for him the reputation of an anti-German. In fact, however, Crowe remained essentially German in his intellect and methodology. He was thoroughly imbued with the ideas of German historians. He devoured the weighty volumes of Ranke and, in addition to the works of von Sybel, Treitschke and Fichte, he read the first volume of Das Kapital. Was it any wonder that in August 1914 he felt himself to be 'in the face of big forces of nature and [that] these must work their way'? Dissatisfied with what he regarded as the hand-to-mouth diplomacy of Lord Salisbury and the absence of planning in British policy-making, Crowe had sought to introduce a more 'historical spirit' into the Office. In a paper of January 1905 he stressed the inadequacy of a system which allowed hardly anyone 'the time or opportunity to engage on that wider survey of affairs and duties which [seemed] the only satisfactory basis on which to establish the management' of foreign policy, and he advocated the preparation of annual reports by heads of mission as a means both of assembling information and of appraising their authors for promotion or transfer. Much to the dismay of the Treasury, he also suggested that the Foreign Office Library employ young university men with 'historical training' to compile 'histories of certain events or incidents of importance' for the guidance of the Foreign Secretary. Crowe himself made full, if not always accurate, use of historical analogies to substantiate his analyses of Macht- and Weltpolitik. Characteristically, when Grey seemed to hesitate in the war crisis of 1914 Crowe cited the example of Prussia which, having opted for neutrality in 1805, had succumbed in the following year to Napoleon's might. And he warned colleagues who contemplated resignation that 'their supreme duty [was] not to Sir Edward Grey and to his Cabinet but to the state', a doctrine which, though constitutionally sound, was surely expressed in terms more appropriate to the Wilhemstrasse than Whitehall.

Bertie subsequently noted that he had learnt that Crowe's 'Prussian blood' had come out and that he had been 'insubordinate and insolent' to Grey. Nevertheless, Crowe's wartime supervision of the Office's economic departments allowed him to carve out a key role in the formulation of commercial policy, and provided him with a good grounding in dealing with the kind of commercial and financial issues which were so important in the diplomacy of the early 1920s.

During his first three years as PUS he also, like Hardinge, had to contend with the demands and daily tantrums of Curzon, who repeatedly complained about the functioning of the Office. Curzon would deliberately ask for him on the telephone at times when Crowe could not reasonably have been expected at his desk and would ask for his return. 'Can't the man realise', Crowe complained, 'that long after he has gone home in his Rolls-Royce, I have to catch a No. 11 bus for Elm-Park Road and sup off sardines or cold sausages before dealing with the evening's telegrams.' The formation of the first Labour Government in January 1924 and Ramsay MacDonald's arrival at the Foreign Office may therefore have come as something of a relief to Crowe. And although they differed over relations with Soviet Russia, MacDonald was personally committed to more open diplomacy and gave his support to a project long favoured by Crowe―the publication in documentary form of the Office's historical record. Crowe believed that Britain had nothing to lose and much to gain by giving the widest possible publicity to its transactions with foreign countries and, from 1908 onwards, he had supported the notion of giving historians freer access to Foreign Office records. He thereby inadvertently ensured that his own dialectic would help shape the history, as well as the course, of British foreign policy.

Crowe had to oversee the Office's transition from war to peace. Its wartime structure was dismantled and by 1922 there were, in addition to the PUS, three Assistant Under-Secretaries, one of whom was from 1925 termed Deputy Under-Secretary. In addition, Crowe's efforts to promote the accords which were eventually concluded at Locarno in October 1925 helped defuse a Franco-German cold war on the Rhine and restored a sense of 'normality' to relations amongst the European powers. Unfortunately, by the time of their signing, Crowe was no more: in declining health, he died on 28 April shortly before his sixty-first birthday.

His successor, Sir William Tyrrell, was also very much a product of the pre-1914 Foreign Office.

Born in India, the grandson of an Indian princess, he was brought-up in the household of his uncle, the distinguished Prussian diplomat Prince Hugo von Radolin, and educated at the University of Bonn and Balliol College, Oxford. He joined the Foreign Office in 1889 and was Private Secretary to Sanderson and later to Grey, and briefly Second Secretary to Bertie's Embassy in Rome. His career was interrupted in 1915 when he suffered a breakdown following the death of his youngest son in battle. But he returned to work in 1916, was appointed head of the newly-formed Political Intelligence Department, and was promoted to Assistant Under-Secretary in October 1918. Urbane, charming and an inexhaustible source of information, Tyrrell worked well with Sir Austen Chamberlain, who was Foreign Secretary for all of the time that he was PUS. He had, however, neither Crowe's eye for administrative detail, nor his proficiency in extensive and profuse minuting. He shunned the drudgery of departmental drafts and was highly selective in his reading of files, and preferred to rely on personal contacts rather than commit his views to paper. Once, in response to a reminder from his Private Secretary that a decision was required on a particular issue, he simply noted: 'Yes, it is.'

Tyrrell was nonetheless quick to stake a claim to the Paris Embassy when it became vacant in July 1928, and he won Chamberlain's backing for his appointment as Ambassador. He was replaced by Sir Ronald Lindsay, an aristocrat and professional diplomat who, apart from a short spell as Assistant Private Secretary to Grey and three years as Assistant Under-Secretary during 1921-24, had spent most of his career in posts abroad. During his eighteen-month tenure as PUS, he seems not to have made a great impression on the Office, and his relations with Arthur Henderson, the new Labour Foreign Secretary, were strained.

In June 1929 he persuaded Henderson, against the latter's better judgement, to remove the British High Commissioner in Egypt; and later that summer he was particularly critical of the Chancellor of the Exchequer, Lord Snowden, whose robust defence of Britain's financial interests had threatened to bring about the collapse of the reparations conference at The Hague. Evidently relieved by Henderson's offer to him of the Embassy in Washington in January 1930, Lindsay assured his successor, Sir Robert Vansittart: 'The staff will carry you.' His language doubtless betrayed his own state of mind. But it was not advice which Vansittart was in any mind to follow.

Vansittart's appointment was not in itself controversial: his opinions and conduct were. Known as 'Van' to his friends, the forty-eight year old Vansittart had served at home and abroad and had had a career which was as varied as that of most modern Permanent Under-Secretaries. As an assistant clerk in 1914, he had been first British delegate at the Conference for the Protection of the Elephant and Rhinoceros in Africa, and since 1928, with the rank of Assistant Under-Secretary, he had served as Private Secretary to Prime Ministers Stanley Baldwin and Ramsay MacDonald. He was a man of strong opinions, which he firmly expressed in correspondence heavily larded with wit and metaphors. According to Anthony Eden, who became Foreign Secretary in December 1935, he was more 'a sincere, almost fanatical crusader' than 'an official giving cool and disinterested advice'. His minutes could be allusive, amusing and contorted, and his immediate successor had good reason to complain of his 'dancing literary hornpipes'. Only three months after his appointment as PUS, he circulated his 'Old Adam' memorandum, a paper in which he bemoaned the reversion of Europe to 'pre-war thought', or what he specified as the 'old diplomacy with its alliances, insurance and reinsurance treaties, balance of power, military values, and the economic theories represented by tariff walls and tariff combinations'. Yet, within three years, he was warning colleagues against Nazi Germany's loosing off another war, and urging the need for large-scale rearmament and the closest of relationships with France.

As, however, Vansittart was soon to be reminded, much would depend on the Treasury's willingness to sanction expenditure on armaments. The Treasury, which had already expanded its influence over foreign policy during the 1920s, strengthened its position in the aftermath of the financial crisis of 1929-31 and jealously guarded its role in international financial and economic relationships. Its pressure together with the strongly held views of the Service Departments considerably curtailed the independence of the Foreign Office, which during the 1930s was increasingly divided on the policies to be pursued towards the continental dictatorships. Vansittart was eventually to emerge as an opponent of further attempts to achieve a modus vivendi with Germany in Europe, but he did not rule out colonial concessions, and meanwhile he made a determined effort to keep Mussolini on the side of Britain and France. It was his discussions with the Italian Foreign Minister in the autumn of 1935, during which he held out the prospect of an understanding with Italy on Ethiopia, which led ultimately to the Hoare-Laval accord and, following a public outcry, the forced resignation of the Foreign Secretary Sir Samuel Hoare. After this debacle, Vansittart's dismissal was seriously considered by Ministers. Eden, Hoare's replacement, decided this would be improper since Ministers were responsible for policy. But both Baldwin and Anthony Eden tried subsequently to persuade Vansittart to give up his post as PUS for the Embassy at Paris. And when Neville Chamberlain succeeded Baldwin as Prime Minister in 1937 he too pressed for Vansittart's removal, a course which Eden did not oppose. In December 1937 Vansittart was 'promoted' to the newly-created post of Chief Diplomatic Adviser to the Government. Thereafter, he was to pose as an 'anti-appeaser', though he remained convinced that Britain could not risk war with Germany until 1939.

Eden made Vansittart's future role in the Foreign Office clear when he stated that the incoming PUS, Sir Alexander Cadogan, would receive all papers and then forward them directly to the Secretary of State.

On 22 January 1938 a document, signed by Eden, stated: 'In the event of a paper requiring urgent action, it will be sent by Sir A. Cadogan direct to the Under Secretary concerned with a slip bearing the words 'Sir R. Vansittart after action'.' Cadogan, who had joined the Diplomatic Service in 1908, and who had been in the British Embassy in Vienna when war was declared on Austria-Hungary in August 1914, had spent all but two of the following years in the Foreign Office. Between 1934 and 1936 he was first Minister and then Ambassador to China, and since October 1936 Assistant Under-Secretary in London. Crowe had thought him 'the best man in the Office', and during the 1920s he had headed the Foreign Office's League of Nations Section. But he took comparatively little interest in the formal machinery of the Office or its procedures, valuing promptitude, efficiency and good drafting. Like many of his predecessors he was concerned about the quality of handwriting and was adamant that minutes should be kept short. As PUS during the Second World War, he faced the Blitz with composure, often refusing to take shelter. On a different front, he had to reckon with the threat posed by the Prime Minister Winston Churchill. The latter was an avid critic of the Office, which he considered cumbersome and always equivocal on matters of policy. Fortunately, with Cadogan, Lord Halifax (Foreign Secretary, 1937-40) and Eden at the helm, the Office maintained a far more prominent position than it had done during the Great War. During a conflict which the South African Prime Minister Jan Smuts once aptly described as 'war by conference', Cadogan accompanied Eden at the major gatherings of the Allied leaders, firmly establishing for the PUS the position of roving diplomatic adviser. He was robust and knowledgeable, a loyal colleague who would not easily succumb to Churchill's bullying tactics.

Cadogan also presided over an Office facing fundamental administrative change. In conversation with Cadogan in the late autumn of 1940, Ernest Bevin, the new Minister of Labour, urged on him the need for the Foreign Office to take a greater interest in industrial and labour matters. And Bevin subsequently addressed a memorandum to Lord Halifax in which he repeated a criticism made often of the Office and the Diplomatic Service both before and since 1914: that diplomacy had 'moved in far too narrow a circle and the reactions of [British] policy on the well-being of the people of other countries [had] not been comprehended'. This appears to have initiated the process which led to the White Paper of January 1943 and the introduction of the Eden Reforms. As a result, a single Foreign Service was established, and the former distinctions between the Foreign Office, the Diplomatic Service, the Commercial Diplomatic Service and the Consular Service were abolished. New methods of selection were also introduced so as to encourage recruitment from a much broader social base. Bevin's suspicions of the Office seem, however, to have disappeared following his appointment as Foreign Secretary in July 1945, and he soon recognised Cadogan as an adviser of exceptional value. Both men were concerned about the Soviet Union's ultimate intentions and, after taking up his new post as Britain's first Permanent Representative to the United Nations in February 1946, Cadogan was drawn into the politics of ideological confrontation. Deeply pessimistic about the new diplomatic institutions at New York, he dubbed the Security Council a 'tiltyard' and could see little chance of it being used for any other purpose.