Escott Reid
Escott Reid (1905-1999). National Secretary of the Canadian Institute of International Affairs in the 1930s. Department of External Affairs, 1939-62. Positions included Assistant Under-Secretary, Deputy Under-Secretary, Acting Under-Secretary, High Commissioner to India, and Ambassador to the Federal Republic of Germany. First Principal of Glendon College, York University
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ESCOTT REID
* Interviewers: Hill
[HILL]* Good afternoon. This is a further tape in the series on Canadian policy in NATO. My name is Roger Hill, Deputy Director of the Parliamentary Centre for Foreign Affairs and Foreign Trade. The interview is being conducted for the Canadian Institute for International Peace and Security. My guest this afternoon is Escott Reid. Mr. Reid, I'm delighted to have this opportunity to meet you and especially pleased that you were willing to participate in this project. Your name has been mentioned constantly in the course of my work and interviews on this project, especially as one who played a particularly vital role in Canadian foreign policy-making at the time the North Atlantic Treaty was established. First of all, I wonder if you could give us an outline of your career with particular emphasis on those periods when you were working on the setting up of the North Atlantic Treaty.
[REID] Yes. I grew up in Toronto and attended Trinity College at the University of Toronto. I was a Rhodes scholar and attended Oxford. For six years during the 1930s I was National Secretary of the Canadian Institute for International Affairs and I also spent one academic year teaching Government and Political Science at Dalhousie University in Halifax. In January 1939, I joined the Department of External Affairs and was posted to the Canadian Legation in Washington as Second Secretary. In 1941 to 1944 I was at the Department in Ottawa and then posted again to Washington for a year in 1944. I was at the international conference on civil aviation in Chicago at the end of 1944, the San Francisco Conference on the UN in the Spring of 1945, and the international meetings on the UN in London from August 1945 to February 1946.
[HILL] I believe this early period in your diplomatic career is described partly in your book On Duty, where you describe the work of establishing the United Nations, particularly in 1945 and 1946. It is not easy, of course, to develop a readable account of the kind of committee meetings one attends in the course of practicing multilateral diplomacy, but I have to say that I found the account of your work in that time both lucid and easy to follow. It gave some idea of the human dimension of the business of hammering out a major international agreement and setting up machinery for the pursuit of international peace and security. Anyway, I’m sorry to interrupt your description of your career. Perhaps we could go back to an outline of your life.
[REID] Well, from 1946 to 1947 I was Counsellor in Ottawa and was then promoted to Assistant Under-Secretary of State for External Affairs. I served in that capacity for a year and then as Acting Under-Secretary and Deputy Under-Secretary from 1948 to 1952.
[HILL] I believe that Lester Pearson was a very powerful force as Under-Secretary of State and as Foreign Minister in much of this period, was he not? I also note that you were his second-in- command for part of this time, particularly in the work on the North Atlantic Treaty between 1947 and 1949. I know that there were other very important figures in Canadian diplomacy at this time and that Canada played a not inconsiderable role in the effort to set up a new system to help maintain Western and international security. In fact I think if one looks at the record, one is struck by the capability of many of the Canadians involved in this process.
[REID] Yes, I think there were many remarkable figures at that time, including Norman Robertson, Hume Wrong, John Holmes, Gerry Riddell, Doug Le Pan, Charles Ritchie and, of course, Louis St. Laurent.
[HILL] Mr. Reid, your own work on the North Atlantic Treaty was carried out partly in the Department of External Affairs and partly in international meetings in Washington, London and elsewhere. Of course, since then, you have continued to speak, write books and publish articles on this issue. In fact, I think that, rather than try to obtain your ideas on the North Atlantic Treaty here today in an impromptu fashion, we might be as well served in this project by asking you to refer us to those of your works which you consider to be the most important in this area.
[REID] Obviously, the place to start from is my book on the establishment of the Treaty, Time of Fear and Hope; The Making of the North Atlantic Treaty, 1947-1949. This was published by McClelland and Stewart in 1977. It discusses the whole issue of the foundation of the North Atlantic Alliance. For example, I began by describing the atmosphere pervading in international relations in the immediate post-war years and then went on to talk about the fears and hopes of those of us who became engaged in the effort to set up a new arrangement for international security. I also describe the organization of the discussions about the Treaty, the conceptual issues involved, the terms of the Treaty and the issue of membership. In chapter 13 there is an extensive description of one of the key issues, whether the Treaty should be simply a military alliance or whether we should aim for something more. I tried in the book to provide a careful and balanced account of the negotiations, that is to say, to write a scholarly work, rather than a collection of reminiscences.
[HILL] The book is certainly a valuable contribution to the study of this field, particularly for students of Canadian foreign policy. Mr. Reid, I wonder if you could refer us to one or two other of your works on the North Atlantic Alliance.
[REID] Yes. I think the key ones are as follows. The first is an article in The NATO Review in 1980 on the miraculous growth of the North Atlantic Alliance. It is included in NATO's Anxious Birth, the Prophetic Vision of the 1940s. edited by Nicholas Sherman. They gave the essay the title "The Art of the Almost Impossible". The second is "Strengthening the North Atlantic Alliance", which appeared in International Perspectives in the November/December issue, 1985. Thirdly, I'd like to cite my most recent discussion of the Alliance which is entitled "The North Atlantic Alliance at Birth and in Middle Age”. This is my address at the opening of a conference in Toronto, on May 20th of this year, on Canada, the United States and the Alliance.
[HILL] Thank you. Now I wonder if we might return briefly to our chronology. I would simply like to obtain some idea of your career after the establishment of the North Atlantic Treaty.
[REID] After my years in Ottawa I was High Commissioner to India from 1952 to 1957. This was quite a different area of operations and I must say I believe it is very valuable in a diplomatic career to shift one's perspective sharply from time to time to get a different outlook on the world from some new vantage point. Then after India I was appointed Ambassador to the Federal Republic of Germany, from 1958-1962. Subsequently I went to the International Bank for Reconstruction and Development, as Director of Operations for South Asia and the Middle East. Then, for four years, from 1965 to 1969, I served as the First Principal of an experimental bilingual arts college, Glendon College of York University in Toronto. For two years after that I was a consultant to the President of the Canadian International Development Agency. I have since then continued to be active in the discussion of international affairs, both as the writer of books and articles and as a participant in a number of conferences. I have written three books in addition to the two you have mentioned, On Duty, and Time of Fear and Hope. One is on the World Bank. It is called Strengthening the World Bank. The other two are on India, Envoy to Nehru, and Hungary and Suez, 1956, a view from New Delhi. The book on Hungary and Suez was published in Canada at the beginning of this year, and will be published in India this summer. Now I am working on my memoirs, which I hope will be published in 1989.
[HILL] Thank you very much. I'm very grateful indeed that you've taken the time to see me today.
