Quai d’Orsay, 1945–51, by Jacques Dumaine

[p033] Quai d’Orsay, 1945-51, by Jacques Dumaine (Chapman and Hall, 30s.) SKILFUL stage-management, a flair for flattery and a ceriain brash bravado have long characterized the diplomatic deal- ings of the French ruling class. The grande bourgeoisie forgot none of its old tricks during the bleak years (1939-44) of its political eclipse. This book throws light on how the applecart of French diplomacy, so rudely upset by the Nazis, was set in motion again after the war. If the wheels of the Fourth Republic emitted frequent creaking sounds during this period, it was certainly not through lack of oil. The author, diplomat and son of a diplomat, was appointed Chef de Protocole after the “Liberation’. He participated. on behalf of the French Foreign Office, in all the international

[p034] MARXISTS IN THE WAR conferences, State visits and other important functions organized to maintain or promote French interests by cement!- ing old friendships and purchasing new ones. His posthumous diary is that of a cultured but somewhat indiscreet cynic, who does not seem to have found uncon- genial his duties of maintaining the myth of France's pristine grandeur. He was a parasite, hobnobbing with royalty, pla- cating the vanities of professional politicians and gliding among the great and among others who merely thought them- selves such. He attended banquets and funerals, listened to operas and complaints, supped with duchesses and deputies and entertained, among others, Ho Chi-minh, the Windsors, Molotov and Adenauer, not to mention ex-Queen Amelia of Portugal. He clearly moved among ‘top people’. He helped procure taxi-girls (‘carefully selected and screened by the Prefecture de Police’) for the nocturnal revelries of Shah- in-Shah Mohamed Pahlevi during his stay in Paris—and was iater entrusted with selecting an appropriate gift for the Pope's sacerdotal anniversary. He was a man of many talents. Dumaine saw events through the spectacles of his class. ‘Private property, thrift and free enterprise, he assures us, are the rights ‘which are most worthy of respect’. Political régimes, he believed, ‘should be controlled by men in their fifties who have, some twenty years previously, been the apostles of bold and controversial ideas. He quotes approv~ ingly Berthelot’s aphorism: ‘Lean heavily on principles and they will give way all the sooner.’ A liberal endowment of Gallic iconoclasm enabled him to overcome some of these shortcomings. Being nobcdy’s fool, he could make a number of quite shrewd assessments. Of the French military he says that they ‘make up for any lack of strategic genius by their ability to dress their troops, blow the bugle calls and beat the drums’. And of the French Stalinists he wrote patronizingly in December 1946: “We are in their debt and should not forget it... economic re- covery has been made possible by the absence of strikes and exorbitant wage claims’-—and by the workers’ ‘uncomplaining drive’. His diary is forthright, as on'y the writings of the deceased can be, in its account of his acquaintances. Ramadier: ‘in- tellectually tired .. . but still hanging on ...a bovine man, almost a pachyderm.’ Jules Moch: ‘a monster of charmless- ness.’ Winston Churchill: ‘imbued with vanity as much as with brandy.’ And Bevin: ‘a thick-skinned ectoplasmic mass.’ The corpulent General Zhukov apparently spent much of his time at the Palais Rose, in 1949, ‘gazing greedily at the sugary nudes in Baudry’s reliefs’. Dumaine had few illusions about his office. His function was to feed ‘the insatiable appetites of serious men for trivialities. He knew that all the pomp and ceremony he organized would carry little weight in deciding the fate of the world he lived in. He somehow sensed the empty seat at all the banquets he attended. And there he was undoubtedly correct. Uninvited today, real men and women would arise tomorrow to administer the world their labour created, and the shadowy creatures that now flit about in the twilight of bourgeois rule would be forgotten for all time. Despite its limitations this book created a furore in high society and among political circles in France when it was first published in 1955. It trod on many toes. And as Francois Mauriac once said (about something quite different): ‘When a man already has one foot in the grave he will not gladly permit the other to be trodden on!’ MARTIN GRAINGER Culture in Russia