Lord Blake on Cadogan's diaries
The Diaries of Sir Alexander Cadogan edited by David Dilkes (Cassell E6) Two questions for a non-diarist are prompted by this rather depressing book.
First — and perhaps easier to answer — why do people like the late Sir Alexander Cadogan write diaries at all? The reason is fairly clear. When one holds an important position and yet is inhibited from any public expression, at the time, of views feelings, judgements, it must be a tremendous relief to pour out on to paper the frustrations and irritations of daily life: the idiocy of politicians, the stupidity of inferiors, the vanity of superiors, the incompetence of colleagues. A diary is always at hand, a silent perpetual, infinitely receptive friend and confidant who can never answer back, never object,
never criticise. For those who feel cross enough and can find time enough the process of diarising may well be wholesome, indeed therapeutic. The illtemper which might otherwise affect their advice and UK ir memoranda is thus diverted into harmless channels.
It seems to be generally agreed that no one who met Sir Alexander Cadogan in his professional capacity had any conception of the multitudinous bees buzzing in his bonnet, the furious prejudices, the angry passions. There is a wide consensus that he was a hard working civil servant of. high ability, unruffled calm, notable application and great clarity of mind. It may well be that the existence of his journal, and the knowledge that every evening he could tell it just what he throught about the tiresome characters with whom he daily dealt, was a real help in dealing with them. If so, no one should complain at this form of activity. As Permanent Under Secretary at the Foreign Office from 1938 to the end of the war, Cadogan certainly had as arduous a task as an official could have had. Anything that helped him in it is to be approved.
But the second question — why publish? — is more of a puzzle. There are of course cases where the publication of a diary is the decision of others — widows, descendants or executors. Probably most instances of publication come technically under this head in the sense that such people have the discretion what to do. But it is usually clear enough whether diarists meant their work to be published, and at least from Greville onwards most of the famous ones were obviously intended to see the light of day, even in a bowdlerised form. Sir Alexander's diary, whatever he had in mind when he was actually writing it, comes out with his full authority for publication. I cannot believe that he was wise to give it, or that the meticulous labour with which Professor Dilkes hao edited the manuscript has been worthwhile.
The reason for this criticism is not because the diary is written by a man whose decisions were not in the end decisive, nor because it brings Cadogan out in a less agreeable light than before its publication — though it undoubtedly does. This is true of many journals whose non
appearance one would have regretted; neither " Chips " Channon's diary, for example nor Harold Nicolson's, different though they are, did the posthumous reputations of their authors any good. Nor did either author count for much in public life. But their diaries are extremely readable and very entertaining; they will last as social commentaries of much value for many years to come. Thomas Jones' Whitehall Diary is another case of one written by a man who was an acute observer, though in his case his reputation as a person is enhanced rather than ctherwise. Publication there was fully justified by the valuable new information cmerging on many of the crucial decisions of post first world war governments.
It seems to me that Sir Alexander Cadogan's diary falls down on these points. It is not at all readable, being largely written in a rather dry staccato telegraphese which soon causes attention to wander, e.g. this for Monday, June 7,
4.30 Hungarian on whom I declared war. He not surprised but I think sad. Not much news from Balkans. German) took a rap from Greeks in Rupel pass (that is official). But they are apparently penetrating into Yugoslavia, and I haven't heard of a Jug firing a shot yet . . .
Nor does it illuminate the great issues of foreign policy to any considerable degree. If, per impossibile, it had come out ten or fifteen years ago it would have been much more interesting, but today it does little more than dot the odd ' i ' or cross the occasional lower case ' t Is it justified, for the light that it throws on Cadogan's own personality? Obviously a diary which, even though heavily cut, cccupies with editorial linking matter and comments nearly 800 pages must tell us something about the author's character,
just as it also tells us something about the workings of the Foreign Office and the Cabinet. But how much does this really amount to? The newspaper serialisation of the book naturally selected all the more sensational (and mostly disagreeable) things that Cadogan said about nearly everyone he met — and this was what most reviewers have seized upon. It also showed him as being totally wrong on a number of important questions. That point is certainly of interest, but one does not need a book of this length to make it, nor to e::plain the role of the Permanent 'Under Secretary in peace and war, nor to describe Cadogan's character. It may well be unfair to judge him at all by his diary. What a man says about people and things when he is tired and over-wrought after a long day's work is unlikely to be a true and considered reflection of his opinions.
I closed this book with a feeling of :egret that the art of historical condensation or distillation seems so often forgotten today. This diary is valuable evidence for history, By all means let the whole of it be on microfilm or in some other accessible form in libraries and archives. But it is not itself history, still less is it literature. Of course there may be examples of diaries which are worth publishing because they really do illuminate events and people. Cadogan's does not come in that category. If Professor Dilkes had written a biographical study of half this length, based on the diary and the other evidence which he has examined, his scholarship, learning and historical expertise would have been put to better use.
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