and--a wearisome
and deadening occupation where very lengthy documents were concerned.

The older men in the Foreign Office were great sticklers for observing
all the traditional forms. Lord Granville, in obedience to political
pressure, had appointed the son of a leading politician as one of his
unpaid private secretaries. The youth had been previously in his
father's office in Leeds. On the day on which he started work in the
Foreign Office he was given a bundle of letters to acknowledge. "You
know, of course, the ordinary form of acknowledgment," said his chief.
"Just acknowledge all these, and say that the matter will be attended
to." When the young man from Leeds brought the letters he had written,
for signature that evening, it was currently reported that they were
all worded in the same way: "Dear Sirs:--Your esteemed favour of
yesterday's date duly to hand, and contents noted. Our Lord Granville
has your matter in hand." The horror-stricken official gasped at such a
departure from established routine.

As was the custom then, after one month in the Foreign Office, my
immediate chief gave me a little lecture on the traditional high
standard of honour of the Foreign Office, which he was sure I would
observe, and then handed me a Cabinet key which he made me attach to my
watch-chain in his presence. This Cabinet key unlocked all the boxes in
which the most confidential papers of the Cabinet were circulated. As
things were then arranged, this key was essential to our work, but a
boy just turned twenty naturally felt immensely proud of such a proof
of the confidence reposed in him. I think, too, that the Foreign Office
can feel justifiably proud of the fact that the trust reposed in its
most junior members was never once betrayed, and that the most weighty
secrets were absolutely safe in their keeping.

I have narrated elsewhere my early experiences at Berlin and Petrograd.
In every capital the Diplomatists must always be, in a sense,
sojourners in a strange land, and many of them who find a difficulty in
amalgamating with the people of the country must always be thrown to a
great extent on their own resources. It is probably for this reason
that theatricals were so popular amongst the Diplomats in Petrograd,
the plays being naturally always acted in French.

Here I felt more or less at home. My grandmother, the Duchess of
Bedford, was passionately fond of acting, and in my grandfather's time,
one room at Woburn