A Sadly Dwindling Band

A recent comment mentioned a letter in the current issue of The Spectator.

In the same issue Cindy Yu writes:

”According to a Freedom of Information request made by The Spectator in 2021, there are only 41 British diplomats who speak Mandarin at the highest level in the entire Foreign Office, four fewer than in 2016. Compare this with the thousands of Sovietologists who worked for Britain during the Cold War.”

But I digress, what evidence is there to support my assertion that Arabists, known affectionately as the Camel Corps, are a dwindling band? A friend writes:

“Yes, Arabists are dwindling. I see increasingly Ambassadors who don’t speak Arabic appointed to head Missions that used to be have Arabist Ambassadors.”

*****

In past posts I have drawn a distinction between the different ways Roosevelt and Churchill ran the war. The former gave his generals free rein, the latter was hell bent on interfering. I never thought to mention Stalin. It seemed obvious he would be in total command and would give his generals orders and if his plans failed they would pay with their lives. Simon Seabag-Montefiore puts me right.

“I suppose the single best decision (of the Second World War in Russia) was Stalin’s decision to listen to his generals. It was the moment when he turned to his generals and said there’s an opportunity at Stalingrad isn’t there, what is it? Make a plan, the two of you. And he suddenly started treating the two generals, Vasilevsky and Zhukov, totally differently. And he shook their hands and he said go away, plan it, come back in two days time with a plan. And they stayed up all night and they came back with the plan and again Stalin receives them completely differently. And when he saw the plan which became Operation Uranus, the encirclement of the 6th Army at Stalingrad, he suddenly realised and said top secrecy, tell no one, and again he shook their hands in a way like a Tsar with his gentlemen officers. And I think that was the ultimate change, that was the moment.”

This made me think I don’t actually know where Stalingrad is or what it’s called. It’s Volgograd and these days I am unlikely to get a chance to visit. It is about a thousand kilometres south east of Moscow but apparently worth going.

“Volgograd today is the site of The Motherland Calls, an 85-metre (279 ft) high statue dedicated to the heroes of the Battle of Stalingrad, which is the tallest statue in Europe, as well as the tallest statue of a woman in the world. The city has many tourist attractions, such as museums, sandy beaches, and a self-propelled floating church. Volgograd was one of the host cities of the 2018 FIFA World Cup.” (Wikipedia)