Monday, Jun. 23, 1941
Eden v. Eton
The democratization of Britain took another spurt last week and the already wobbling prestige of The Old School Tie took another blow.
One such blow was delivered last year when the British Army ruled that officer-ships, instead of being restricted to graduates of Britain's public (private) and military schools, would thereafter be open also to the ranks. But the British Foreign Service continued to be recruited, as an English wag once put it, from young public-school and Oxford-Cambridge University men of private means possessed of "a knowledge of two or three foreign languages, some familiarity with the graces, and a nodding acquaintance with the muses." Among other guarantees that moneyed wearers of The Old School Tie would dominate the Foreign Service was the fact that a beginning junior third secretary got only $1,100 a year.
Marked symptoms of Old School Stuffiness in the service have recently begot the quip that "if the Foreign Office says so, you can be sure it's wrong." Last week Foreign Secretary Anthony Eden joined the British Army in publicly admitting that criteria built around The Old School Tie are so narrow as to keep out many of the best men for 20th-century jobs. To an applauding House of Commons he announced that hereafter posts in a combined Foreign Office-diplomatic-consular service* would be available to all on the basis of ability. Presumably salaries will be raised to attract men without private incomes. Himself a wearer of the oldest Old School Tie (Eton's black and light blue), Anthony Eden confined his reasons to the dignified statement that "the reforms we propose will not only increase efficiency but will also make our diplomacy more representative of the country as a whole." Even the ultraconservative, Tie-sporting editors of the London Times heartily agreed.
* Since 1924 the U.S. Foreign Service has been so combined, to good effect.
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