Diplomat Anecdote

Artful Diplomat

"The diplomat Valentine Dale, on a mission to Flanders, found himself running short of money. The queen's notorious parsimony was such that he feared he would be unlikely to receive a draft before he became seriously embarrassed for cash. Nonetheless, he wrote to the queen about the affairs of state and his financial position; by the same packet he also sent an affectionate letter to his wife, giving an intimate account of his state of health and mentioning his monetary difficulty. However, the letter intended for the queen was addressed to his wife and vice versa, so that Elizabeth was startled and amused to find herself reading a familiar letter interspersed with such endearments as 'sweetheart' and 'dear love.' The mix-up appealed to her sense of humor, and Dale's financial problem to her sense of diplomatic honor. She promptly sent off a further supply of money, never suspecting that the 'mistake' of course had been deliberately contrived by the artful diplomat."




Political Stew?

In January 1950, Victor Biaka-Boda, a former witch doctor representing the Ivory Coast in the  French Senate, toured his nation's hinterlands to communicate with his electorate and assess their concerns - one of which, apparently, was the food supply: Biaka-Boda's constituents ate him.

Galbraith vs Galbraith

Shortly after serving as US ambassador to India, the famous American economist John Kenneth Galbraith was appointed by President John F. Kennedy to serve as America's representative on a special two-person committee struck to resolve a decade-long dispute between American and Canadian airlines over reciprocal landing rights. Meanwhile, Canadian Prime Minister Lester B. Pearson chose, as his nation's representative, the great Canadian-born economist... John Kenneth Galbraith: "After I negotiated with myself on the few serious points of difference," Galbraith later recalled, "I rendered a judgment satisfactory to the carriers of both countries."

Pacifism

The French ambassador to Washington, Jean Jusserand, once found himself discussing pacifism with Theodore Roosevelt's wife. "Why don't you learn from the United States and Canada?" she suggested. "We have a three-thousand-mile unfortified peaceful frontier. You people arm yourselves to the teeth." "Ah, madame," Jusserand replied. "Perhaps we could exchange neighbors."
[Trivia: In 2002, city officials in Bethany, Oklahoma - tired of losing shoppers (and sales tax revenues) to neighbouring municipalities, painted an 18-inch-wide blue line along its jagged boundary with Oklahoma City and Warr Acres to prevent its residents from mistakenly dining or shopping outside the city. In response, Warr Acres erected signs along the border reading: "Warning: Higher Taxes Ahead." (Associated Press)]


Bodyguard

In the mid-1930s, with anti-Nazi sentiments on the rise and an important German diplomat scheduled to visit New York, the city's mayor, Fiorello La Guardia, had considerable difficulty reconciling his duty to protect the visitor with his intense hatred of the Nazis. As a compromise, La Guardia surrounded the German diplomat with a bodyguard of specially selected policemen - each of whom was Jewish.

[A similar story is told of one-time police commissioner Teddy Rossevelt)