THE
CONSULAR SERVICES
625
protection
abroad of
wild birds
and
their
plumage
1
. Business
so
multi-
farious
cannot
have
left
any great spirit
of
enterprise
in the five
or
six
in-
dustrious
public
servants
who had
to
deal
with
it.
And,
in
fact,
behind
the
complimentary
criticisms of
the commercial
experts
who
gave
evidence
in
1914,
there
is
apparent
the
sense
of
something
wanting,
of
some
expectation
unfulfilled,
which
finds,
perhaps,
its most
cogent expression
in
the
demand
of Mr
Hirst,
then Editor of
The
Economist,
that the
Foreign
Office should
be
itself,
and
not in
cooperation
with
the Board of
Trade,
"a mirror of
the nation
... an
intelligence
department
for
foreign
commerce
...
a kind
of
meteorological
office for
publishing
conditions
in
foreign
countries
2
."
It
was
in the
hope,
therefore,
of
obviating
organic
defects,
which
became more
sensible
as
the
strain of
the Great
War
increased,
that
—
Mr Balfour
being
at
the
time
at
the
Foreign
Office,
Sir
Albert
Stanley
at
the
Board
of
Trade,
and
reconstruction in
the
air
3
—
the
Department
of
Overseas
Trade
—
a
mixed
concern
with
a
composite
staff
and a dual
allegiance
—
was
set
up
in
1917,
and
Sir
Arthur
Steel-Maitland
placed
at its
head,
with
the rank
of an
additional
Parliamentary Under-Secretary
in
both the Offices
concerned.
Generally
speaking,
it seems
clear that the
Foreign
Office has
done
either too much or too little in
the
matter of
foreign
trade. The
creation
of
the Overseas Trade
Department,
was,
at
best,
a doubtful
compromise
be-
tween the
majority
and
minority reports
of an
inter-departmental
Committee
under
the
Chairmanship
of Lord
Faringdon.
It
may
have
been the best
thing
to
be
done,
but it was
not
the best
thing
that
could have been
thought
of
.
The commercial business of a nation of
shop-keepers
desiderates
something
better
than divided counsels
or
distributed
energy
in
the Government.
It
is,
if
we are
candid
with
ourselves,
in
peace-time
the
greatest
of all its
Foreign
Affairs,
and,
in time of
War,
as
events were
even then
showing,
the
greatest
of all its
weapons,
both
of
offence and of
defence.
To
have
realised the
ideas
of
Mallet;
to
have made the
Foreign Secretary
an interested
apostle
of
commercial treaties
;
to
have
brought
under
the
roof of
the
Foreign
Office,
or
into its nearest
vicinity,
that
part
of
the
Commercial
Intelligence
Branch
of the Board of Trade concerned
with the
affairs of
foreign
countries
;
to
have
strengthened
the Commercial and Consular
Department
of
the
Foreign
Office
both
numerically
and
by
the
inclusion
in it of some
Consular
officers
;
and to
have
stimulated
the collection
of
commercial
intelligence
by
the
creation of
"
Commercial Counsellors"
of
diplomatic
rank,
resident
abroad
and
connecting
the Consulates with
the Embassies
and
the
Embassies with
the
Commercial
Department
—
this
was
a
policy,
as some critics
thought,
from
which more considerable
results
might
have
been
expected
than
from
the
plan
actually adopted.
It
remains
to
make mention of two
classes
of
officials,
both
reckoned,
indeed,
to
belong
to
the
Diplomatic
and not
the Consular
Service,
and
both
strings
in
the network
designed
to catch information
about trade overseas
—
1
App. 5th
Report
Civil Service
Comm.
1914,
Min. of
Ev.,
Q.
37,339.
2
Ibid.
Qs.
40,610-11.
8
See the
Memorandum on the Further
Organisation
of
Commercial Intelli-
gence
(Cd.
8715).
w.&g.iii
40