Esprit de Corps Read Online Free PDF

says that he has swallowed a moth? Drage was flashing about snuffing out pieces of pudding.
    â€œWe made some attempt to save the evening, but in vain. The awful thing was that whenever Spalding caught De Mandeville’s eye they both subsided into helpless laughter. The Yugoslavs were in an Irremediable Huff and from then on they shut up like clams, and took their collective leave even before the coffee was served.
    â€œIt was quite clear that Spalding’s Timber Pact was going to founder in mutual mistrust once more. The whole affair was summed up by the Central Balkan Herald in its inimitable style as follows: ‘We gather that the British Embassy organized a special dinner at which the Niece de Resistance was Glum Pudding and a thoroughly British evening was enjoyed by all.’ You couldn’t say fairer than that, could you?”

5
    For Immediate Release
    â€œMost F.O. types”, said Antrobus, “are rather apt to imagine that their own special department is more difficult to run than any other; but I must say that I have always handed the palm to you Information boys. It seems to me that Press work has a higher Horror Potential than any other sort.”
    He is right, of course. Antrobus is always right, and even though I am no longer a foreign service type I am proud to be awarded even this tardy recognition when all is said and done.
    A press officer is like a man pegged out on an African ant-hill for the termites of the daily press to eat into at will. Nor are we ever decorated. You never read of a press officer getting the George Cross for rescuing a reporter who has fallen into his beer. Mostly we just sit around and look as if we were sickening for an O.B.E.
    And what can compare with the task of making journalists feel that they are loved and wanted—without which they founder in the Oedipus Complex and start calling for a Parliamentary Commission to examine the Information Services? Say what you like, it’s an unenviable job.
    Most of the press officers I’ve known have gradually gone off their heads. I’m thinking of Davis who was found gibbering on the Nan Tal Pagoda in Bangkok. All he could say was: “For Immediate Release, absolutely immediate release.” Then there was Perry who used to boil eggs over a spirit-lamp in the office. He ended by giving a press conference in his pyjamas.
    But I think the nicest and perhaps the briefest press officer I have ever known was Edgar Albert Ponting. He was quite unique. One wonders how he was recruited into so select a cadre. He was sent to me as second secretary in Belgrade. I had been pressing for help for some time with a task quite beyond me. The press corps numbered some fifty souls—if journalists can be said to have souls. I could not make them all feel loved and wanted at once. Trieste with its ghastly possibilities of a shooting war loomed over us: propaganda alone, I was told, could keep the balance—could keep it a shouting war. I turned to the Foreign Office for help. Help came, with all the traditional speed and efficiency. After two months my eleventh telegram struck a sympathetic chord somewhere and I received the information that Edgar Albert was on the way. It was a great relief. Fraternization with the press corps had by this time raised my alcohol consumption to thirty slivovitza a day. People said they could see a pulse beating on the top of my head. My Ambassador had taken to looking at me in a queer speculative way, with his head on one side. It was touch and go. But it was splendid to know that help was at hand. It is only forty odd hours from London to Belgrade. Ponting would soon be at my elbow, mechanically raising and lowering his own with the old Fleet Street rhythm press officers learn so easily.
    Mentally, I toasted Ponting in a glass of sparkling Alka Seltzer and called for the Immediate file. From Paris came the news that he had not been found on the train. After a wait of four days