According to the scheme of examination for unpaid attachéships, instituted in December 1855 when Lord Clarendon was at the head of the Foreign Office and approved by Lord John Russell in 1859, but no longer in force, History was of the kind, candidates themselves said, that they could ‘get up’ in three months, and get rid of in a week.[1] And no wonder: ‘for the convenience of candidates’ it had been settled that, ‘as regards modern history generally’, they were to be examined in ‘so much of Heeren’s Historical Manual of the Political System of Europe and its Colonies[2] as treats of history since 1789’, and in the fourth volume of Russell’s Modern Europe; and, as regards any particular country to which they might
- ↑ ‘I have heard those who have been crammed use this expression: That they were three months learning history, and a week in forgetting it again.’—Lord Malmesbury, Report, 184.
- ↑ A translation of Heeren’s work from the fifth German edition (1830) had been made in 1834 (Oxford: Talboys). The work was first published in 1809. It was translated into several languages, including Swedish and Polish, before appearing in English.
Bernstorff, who retired, at a ministerial crisis, from the office of Foreign Minister of Prussia in October 1862. Before that time most of the secretaries in the Foreign Office had belonged to the French colony; the register of dispatches was kept in French; the Ambassadors usually reported in French. Bismarck extended the use of German, making its use the rule, in the diplomatic correspondence of Germany. He claimed even to have ‘introduced’ German—‘only, however, with Cabinets whose language is understood in our own Foreign Office. England, Italy, also Spain—even Spanish can be read in case of need. Not with Russia, as I am the only one’ (January 17, 1871) ‘in the Foreign Office who understands Russian. Also not with Holland, Denmark, and Sweden—people do not learn those languages as a rule. They write in French and we reply in the same language.’—Busch, Bismarck (1898), i. 213, 477. It was one of Bismarck’s foibles to distrust an Englishman who speaks French with a correct accent. That advice had been given to him, and he had generally found it true. But, he added, ‘I must make an exception in favour of Odo Russell’.—Ibid. i. 420.
