Proud Servant: The Memoirs of a Career Ambassador

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Kent State University Press, 1998 - 430 páginas

"These memoirs, by a seasoned and highly competent career diplomatist, covering his various involvements with Latin America and his frequent tiffs with his own government, give an authoritative and amusing picture of the trials of foreign service life and work around the period of the Second World War."

--George F. Kennan

Ellis O. Briggs (1899-1976) entered the Foreign Service of the United States in 1925. During the next 37 years he was ambassador to seven countries: the Dominican Republic, Uruguay, Czechoslovakia, Korea, Peru, Brazil, and Greece. An eighth appointment, to Spain, was cancelled when he retired due to illness. He also served in Cuba, Chile, Liberia, and China. His memoirs are an exhuberant record of a gifted diplomat.

Briggs reached the highest rank attainable in the Foreign Service--Career Ambassador--and received the Medal of Freedom from President Eisenhower for his service in wartime Korea. He gained a reputation for successfully handling large diplomatic missions and dealing with difficult situations. But his greatest virtue was his honesty, his passion to report things just as he saw them and make policy recommendations regardless of conventional wisdom in Washington. He employed a high sense of humor, often to devastating effect, on bureaucrats at home as well as adversaries abroad. His strong views about policy sometimes placed him in conflict with others; fellow Dartmouth graduate Nelson Rockefeller had him fired from the Foreign Service because of disagreements (Briggs soon returned to the Service).

A down-to-earth New Englander with an abiding love of the outdoors, Briggs was devoted to his wife and family as well as to his country. Proud Servant is full of insights about the practice of diplomacy in this century and provides a fascinating account of the modern Foreign Service.


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Páginas seleccionadas

Contenido

Expropriation Is Stealing
137
False Calm in Chile Before Pearl Harbor
144
Everything Literally Everything Is at Stake
157
Pearl Harbor
168
Spruille Braden
172
Here Today Gone Tomorrow
184
Pat Hurleys China
203
The State Department Struggles with Peace
230

President Roosevelt Conducts Foreign Policy
106
The Secretary and the Undersecretary
113
Good Neighbors
121
The Pentagon Panama and Alger Hiss
239
The Move to Foggy Bottom
248
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Página 116 - That any attempt on the part of a non-American State against the integrity or inviolability of the territory, the sovereignty or the political independence of an American State shall be considered as an act of aggression against the states which sign this declaration.
Página 411 - A democracy cannot exist as a permanent form of government. It can only exist until the voters discover that they can vote themselves largesse from the public treasury.
Página 121 - In the field of world policy I would dedicate this Nation to the policy of the good neighbor— the neighbor who resolutely respects himself and, because he does so, respects the rights of others— the neighbor who respects his obligations and respects the sanctity of his agreements in and with a world of neighbors.
Página 256 - I therefore request your excellency to receive him favorably and to give full credence to what he shall say on the part of the United States, and to the assurances which I have charged him to convey to you of the best wishes of this Government for the prosperity of the Hawaiian Islands.
Página 256 - Doe], a distinguished citizen of the United States, to reside near the Government of Your Excellency in the quality of Ambassador Extraordinary and Plenipotentiary of the United States of America. He is well informed of the relative interests of the two countries and of the sincere desire of this Government to cultivate to the fullest extent the friendship which has so long subsisted between them. My knowledge of his high character and ability gives me entire confidence that he will constantly endeavor...
Página 57 - Mother, may I go out to swim?" "Yes, my darling daughter. Hang your clothes on a hickory limb But don't go near the water.
Página 68 - ... export' of labor from Liberia to Fernando Po have resulted in the development of a system which seems hardly distinguishable from organized slave trade, and that in the enforcement of this system the services of the Liberian Frontier Force, and the services and influences of certain high Government officials are constantly and systematically used.
Página 256 - States, and the assurances which I have charged him to convey to you of the best wishes of this Government for the prosperity of the Hawaiian Islands. May God have your Excellency in his wise keeping ! "Written at Washington, this nth day of March, in the year 1893. " (Signed) GROVER CLEVELAND. "By the President: " WJ GRESHAM, Secretary of State.
Página 68 - Government that there have come to the attention of the Government of the United States, from several sources, reports bearing reliable evidence of authenticity which definitely indicate that existing conditions incident to the so-called 'export...
Página 184 - The Dominican Republic •=» occupies the eastern two-thirds of the island of Hispaniola...

Acerca del autor (1998)

Ellis O. Briggs was a career diplomat, author, and outdoorsman. His publications include Shots Heard Round the World; Farewell to Foggy Bottom; and Anatomy of Diplomacy; and he contributed numerous articles and short stories to magazines such as Smart Set, Colliers, Readers Digest, Foreign Service Journal, and Saturday Evening Post.

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