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DIPLOMATIC DESPATCHES FROM A SON TO HIS MOTHER John Mason DIPLOMATIC DESPATCHES FROM A SON TO HIS MOTHER John Mason With a foreword by the Rt Hon. Sir Ninian Stephen KG, AK National Library of Australia Canberra 1998 Published by the National Library of Australia Canberra ACT 2600 Australia © John Mason and the National Library of Australia 1998 National Library of Australia Cataloguing-in-Publication entry Mason, John, Sir, 1927- . Diplomatic despatches: from a son to his mother. ISBN 0 642 10797 1. 1. Mason, John, Sir, 1927- —Correspondence. 2. Soldiers—Great Britain— Correspondence. 3. Diplomats—Great Britain—Correspondence. 4. Korean War, 1950-1953—Personal narratives, British. 5. Diplomatic and consular service, British. 6. Diplomatic and consular service, British—Australia. I. National Library of Australia. II. Title. 327.41092 Editor: Julie Stokes Designer: Beverly Swifte Proofreader: Tony Twining Printed by Lamb Printers, Perth FOREWORD Autobiographies all too often conceal the true essence of their authors, instead depicting them as they see themselves or, perhaps worse, as they would wish to be seen. Collected letters are sometimes little better, concealing from the addressee, and consequently from other readers, as much or more than they reveal. John Mason's remarkable work is neither autobiography nor conventional collection of letters. From it there emerges a fascinating portrait of a man's development from 17-year-old soldier at the end of the Second World War to senior diplomat of some 40 years later; insights, too, into many of the events of the troubled second half of this century. The letters collected here are those John Mason wrote regularly, for over 40 years, to his mother and, after her death, to his sister; recounting his remarkable and very varied career over those years. But they do not stand alone, each is followed by Mason's own comments and explanations of what would otherwise be obscure, made from the mature perspective of today. The comments contain incisive, and sometimes acerbic, assessments of events and of the innumerable individuals he has met, ranging from world leaders through ambassadors and politicians of all hues to simple citizens like the elderly Scottish lady exiled in the Northern Territory who consoled herself with the thought that the sun setting on the brick-red hills looked 'a wee bit like Scotland'. Never long absent from those comments is John Mason's characteristic sense of humour and the wit with which he gives it expression. John Mason's letters begin as a very young soldier in the last months of the Second World War, and continue as he is in turn an intolerant, rather racist and still very young officer in the British Army in India in the last days of the Raj, a Cambridge undergraduate with long vacations spent as an escort to British tourists to the Continent, a front-line soldier in combat in Korea when recalled to serve in the Royal Ulster Rifles in 1950-52 and finally a career officer in the Foreign Office, first as a very junior, then a middle-ranking and, ultimately, a very senior British diplomat in posts around the world for 30 years from 1954 onwards. iii DIPLOMATIC DESPATCHES Knowing John Mason only during and after his last posting, as British High Commissioner in Canberra, and as one of the most active and articulate representatives that Britain has ever sent to Australia, it is the development of the man, seen through his letters and enlivened by the comments of his mature years, that for me gives this work its very special quality. But as an account of the 40 years which the letters cover, letters written without thought of publication and, to their author's astonishment, emerging from the oblivion of his sister's files only in 1994, the book is a personal chronicle of much of the second half of this century, as seen and lived through by an acute and critical observer both of its events and of many of those who made them happen. The war in Korea, bloody and harsh, with his own battalion suffering heavy casualties, is for many of us today an almost forgotten campaign; John Mason's account of it as seen by a front-line soldier brings it to life in all its bleak horror. The contrast in lifestyles when, as a young diplomat, he later takes up his first overseas Foreign Office posting as Third Secretary in the British Embassy in Rome is startling. It is also in Rome that he marries Margaret, who happily passes with flying colours his Ambassador's wife's careful scrutiny of the Third Secretary's intended, Margaret, the 'extremely attractive English girl' whom he first met and instantly fell in love with in Stresa in 1949 and who has since shared his life for over 40 years. No less a matter of contrast was John Mason's next posting, in Poland's ravaged capital, slowly recovering from the harshest of its communist regimes and from all the disasters of invasion, brutal German occupation and post-war Russian domination. While there Britain and France's fatal Suez adventure, doomed from the start, takes place and we read his contemporaneous account of his own hostile reaction to it and those of his colleagues. We next find him in Damascus as First Secretary both before and after the Baath Party's seizure of power, in New York and all over the United States as director of the British Trade Development Office, then wrestling with Common Market negotiations in Europe, later as IV FOREWORD Ambassador to Israel and finally as High Commissioner to Australia, where he now lives as an Australian citizen pursuing his habitual state of activity, unconvincingly disguised as retirement. Interposed in all this were years of a protracted but successful fight against lung cancer, long mis-diagnosed and somewhat mysteriously cured. John Mason's years as High Commissioner cannot be described as years in Canberra for he was everywhere, visiting as many diverse parts of the continent as has the most travelled native-born Australian; he claims to have visited every city and town of 5000 inhabitants or more. His idiosyncratic impressions of Queensland and of Perth are as challenging as his remarks, as a Sydney resident, on Melbourne's weather. His impressions of the many Australian political leaders with whom he has dealt are no less challenging. As a friend John Mason has always been as provocative in his views as he has been enlivening in his discourse. This book is a true mirror of the man as I have known him; his graphic and wholly personal accounts of the times and places he has known and of the people he has dealt with, often people of whom much has already been written, well reflect John Mason, as a critical, ironic observer of mankind whose sense of humour and intellectual curiosity have given him a life as full of incident as it has been rewarding in outcome. The Rt Hon. Sir Ninian Stephen, KG, AK February 1998 v For the girl whose path I crossed in Stresa CONTENTS Foreword by Sir Ninian Stephen KG, AK iii Introduction 1 Soldier in training, May 1945-October 1946 3 India, December 1946-February 1948 19 Cambridge and Europe, May 1948-August 1950 39 Korea, August 1950-August 1951 59 Rome, March 1954-July 1956 83 Warsaw, August 1956-April 1959 101 Damascus, January 1962-January 1965 123 Cancer, January 1965-August 1968 137 New York, August 1968-September 1971 147 Tel Aviv, December 1976-February 1980 159 Canberra, May 1980-September 1984 177 Appendix: The Recipients 199 The letter card I wrote to my parents on the day I joined the army INTRODUCTION Pte Mason J 14483721 No 4 Squad No 4 Coy 96 PTC, Bodmin, Cornwall 2 May 1945 These letter cards have been issued free because the Sergeant has to hand in a chit to say we've all written home. We've all been to the dentist and the doctor, and I have no problems. Our room Lance Corporal is a grand bloke, aged 19, and our Sergeant is OK. We look like having a very good time. By the way, we don't get vaccinated for a fortnight. We get up at 6am! The food so far is OK. Fried eggs for tea. This is all for now, I guess. My civvy clothes will arrive next week in army paper at army expense. Love John I wrote this letter to my mother on the day I joined the army, aged 17, on 2 May 1945. I continued to write to her every week thereafter until her sudden death in July 1968, just as my wife and I—as members of the Diplomatic Service—were about to leave for a posting in New York. I continued to write regularly to my sister, Mary, who had lived with my parents and had therefore read all my letters to my mother. In 1994 I was astonished to learn from Mary that my mother, and subsequently she herself, had kept all my letters over 40 years, and lovingly filed them. They were sent to me in Sydney, and of course they were an immensely nostalgic and compelling read. I offer some account of the original recipients of my letters in the Appendix. Also in 1994, I received a suggestion from Sir Ninian Stephen, former Governor-General of Australia and the then Chairman of the Council of the National Library of Australia, that I might entrust my personal papers to the Library. My official papers had to remain in the Public Records Office in Kew, but I offered to make available my letters to my mother and sister if they might be of interest.

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