TEXT D The average citizen, with
his eyes glued to the "box", has only the vaguest idea what an ambassador does.
In the press he is pictured standing by a carriage from the royal or
presidential palace with his chest covered in gold lace or in evening dress in
the middle of the morning, splashed with orders and decorations like an
old-fashioned swimming instructor. In Osber Lancaster’s cartoons his white tie
and broad sash are accompanied by the paunch and debilitated look of one whom
the restrictions of his profession have required to make do for vices with an
excess of food, drink and sleep. Questions in parliament suggest that he is
solely occupied in giving extravagant parties at the tax-payer’s expense if he
is British, or in ignoring the parking regulations if he is a foreigner in
London. The jaundiced ambassador may sometimes be inclined to
conclude that he is regarded principally as a service agency: that to the
tourist his only serious responsibility is to produce money when a wallet is
stolen; that to the businessman his sole purpose is to promote the businessman’s
interest; that to the press correspondent he is there to provide information for
the correspondent’s copy and a good story out of anything that happens in the
embassy; that to visiting politicians he is the provider of free board and
lodging and an introduction and shopping service, and that to Mr. Le Carre’s
readers he is the man who keeps the spy out of the cold. In his
more charitable moments he will admit that the tourist in difficulty is entitled
to ask for the embassy’s help; that the businessman is promoting his country’s
exports and that it is one of the ambassador’s most important duties to help
him; that cooperation between the embassy and the press correspondent is useful
to both; that he is paid to give hospitality and has the staff to provide
services to visiting politicians and will be well advised to do what he can for
them; and he will assure you that the only spies whose acquaintance he
cultivates are those defeated in the last chapter by James Bond.
Perhaps the ambassador gains some spurious comfort from those writers to
whom the diplomat is, by definition, a paragon of all the virtues, brilliantly
perceptive, patient, loyal, modest and of the highest integrity, able to win the
confidence of "the ruling few", handsome, not too witty, an accomplished host,
expert in food and wines, and speaking four or five foreign languages perfectly.
But he knows in his more sober moments that in real life he is no better nor
worse endowed than his contemporaries in other professions, though there is
always a danger that the requirements of the voracious god, security, will
reduce him to a dead level of unenterprising mediocrity. He knows too that
the better informed of the public do not regard him as wallowing in luxury, but
sympathize with him for having to keep a government hotel and endure a regular
diet of official parties notable only for their tedium and their capacity to
induce mental and physical exhaustion. In the old days, the
ambassador was purely political. Nowadays, whatever his personal predilections,
he will recognise that he must give serious attention to matters other than
politics. He must regard himself as an economist, a commercial traveller, an
advertising agent for his country; he wields the weapon of culture for political
ends; he promotes scientific and. technical exchanges and administers
development aid. He cannot wholly detach himself from the technicalities and
personal inconvenience which accompany the battle for intelligence. He must
concern himself with the relations not only of governments, but of politicians,
scientists, musicians, actors, authors, footballers, and trade unionists. But he
continues to have a basic political job, to negotiate with the other government
and to keep his own government informed about anything in the country to which
he is accredited which affects his country’s interests. According to the passage, which of the following words can be used to describe an ambassador’s work