Memoir of the Career of Sir Reginald Michael Hadow [‎8r] (15/26)

wrong colour to be acceptable in the new Indian Foreign Service. He wished
me well in the UK Foreign Service which he advised me to join.
I was present at the Independence Day Ceremonies on August 15 and on August 17,
my birthday, found myself temporarily attached to the British High Commission
and administered by the C.R.O. I returned to the UK in 1948.
Again under the terms the F.O. were prepared to take on a certain number of
ex F & P officers directly transferred. They obviously lost their compensation,
But only officers b0rn before August 1915 were eligible.
After some fairly heated correspondence with the C.R.O. I was told that if I
wished to join the F.O. I must sit the entrance exam all over again with
In fact the exam apart from an essay consisted in
the "houseparty" system at Stoke d'Abernon. So I was flown home in late
1947 to go through this process. I was then 33 and disgusted at the whole
business and must have behaved very badly. In particular I remember objecting
strangly to paying £10 for the medical which I pointed out had been free in
1938. I also remember the doctor's face when he read my form: amoebic dysentery,
quartan malaria, saixdfly fever, jaundice. He told me most of his clients were
aged 23 or 24 and apart from war wounds confessed to little much graver than
measles and chicken pox.
However I passed, and was accepted into the Foreign Service with the rank of
2nd Secretary (some F & P colleagues, junior to me in the service, but born
before Aug 1 1915, had been taken in without exam as 1st Secretaries). My
arguments that I had procured myself alternative Government Service and that
I had also lost seniority thereby were of no avail. I never
saw that compensation