James Marjoribanks
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Sir James Marjoribanks KCMG
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Sir James Alexander Milne Marjoribanks KCMG (May 29, 1911 – January 29, 2003) was a career diplomat in the British Foreign Service and became British ambassador to the European Economic Community. He presented Britain's application to join the European Community in 1967 and was instrumental in this application becoming successful.
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[edit] Background and family life
James Marjoribanks was born in Colinton, near Edinburgh, Scotland, the third son of Reverend Thomas Marjoribanks a minister in the Presbyterian Church of Scotland and Elizabeth Logan. James Marjoribanks’ father Thomas and his brother William were respectively heads of the lowland Clan Marjoribanks. Elizabeth Logan was descended from Sir Robert Logan, Baron of Restalrig, the leading family of the lowland Logan clan. James Marjoribanks attended two of Edinburgh’s famous public schools (i.e. private schools) - Merchiston Castle School and Edinburgh Academy. He said he disliked both schools but Merchiston slightly less, despite the fact the Headmaster, “Keelie” Milne, was a particularly nasty little man, with a savage taste for discipline.
In order to prepare for his entrance into Edinburgh University where he was to study modern languages, James spent 1927-28 in Paris and at the Convitto Maschile Valdese in Torre Pellice, Italy where he became fluent in Italian. This was to prove useful to him later. He graduated from Edinburgh University with a first class honours Master of Arts (Scotland) in 1932 and then studied German further in Bonn and Tübingen, Germany. He stayed for four months with a German newspaper proprietor’s family which coincided with the accession to power of Adolf Hitler in January 1933. James noted that the general attitude was “We’ve tried everything else, so we might as well try Adolf. If he’s no good we’ll get rid of him.” But, he also noted, it wasn’t as easy as that. After the war, James discovered that a bomb had destroyed both the house and the parents. Two of the three sons had died on the Eastern Front (World War II).
James passed the British Foreign Service (later called the Foreign and Commonwealth Office) exams in 1933 and was posted as a vice-consul in the China Consular Service in 1934.
[edit] Diplomatic Life
[edit] Japan (1934-38)
James spent much of his first two years in China learning Standard Mandarin which he quickly spoke fluently to the awe of his colleagues. He found that it was not difficult to make oneself understood fairly quickly in Mandarin, as there is little in the way of orthodox grammar, no alphabet, no genders, no inflexions - only a series of sounds portrayed by ideographs. But there were many pitfalls in the sounds.
At a consular cocktail party, he was asked by the first secretary to mix the cocktails beforehand. Since James had grown up in a Scottish manse in the 1920s he knew nothing about mixing cocktails. So he liberally added portions from all the bottles of drinks available into the cocktail bowl. The cocktail was a great success. Afterwards, the first secretary said "Devilishly good cocktail, James!" and asked for the recipe. James replied gravely that the recipe was a “family secret!”
He had become engaged to Sonya Stanley Alder (sister of the portrait painter and author Vera Stanley Alder) in the UK and was allowed to send for her at the end of his two years probationary period. Sonya was one of three brides-to-be who took the same boat to China but the only one to eventually marry her man. One of the two other girls had a shipboard romance with a male passenger. The other girl took one look at what was waiting for her on the quayside and booked a return passage home! Sonya and James were married in the embassy chapel on 29 December, 1936. The British ambassador, Sir Hughe Knatchbull-Hugessen (who later, as ambassador to Turkey, was infamous because of the German spy “Cicero” Elyesa Bazna) gave the bride away. They were happily married until Sonya’s death in 1981.
In 1938, James was posted to Hankou where the Chiang Kai-shek government had set up its temporary headquarters after the fall of Nanjing. James noted that one of the last dispatches the Chinese government received in Nanjing from the British Embassy while the city was already burning and the Rape of Nanjing was taking place , was that “In future the import of grey squirrels into the United Kingdom is forbidden.” There was a courteous acknowledgement from the Chinese Foreign office with an assurance that the information had been referred to the appropriate department. Hankou in turn became a very dangerous place after the rest of the British diplomatic staff left and the Japanese army occupied the city.
One morning, some weeks after the Japanese Occupation, James was standing in the middle of the road in the British Embassy Concession when he saw the gate burst open and, it seemed to him, that the whole Japanese Army was pouring into the road. So he stopped the leading Japanese officer and told him, in his few words of Japanese, that this was the British concession and he had no right to be here. The Japanese officer merely tried to brush past and so, accepting the inevitable, James decided to provide the escort. As they walked down the road, James pointed out buildings of interest, the Nippon Usen Kaishu offices, the Chartered Bank, etc. As they approached the Hankou Bund however, a number of heads started popping out of offices among which James recognised members of the British business community, obviously wondering what on earth was going on. When they reached the Bund, James stopped the Japanese contingent once more, and pointed ostentatiously to the Customs House some hundred yards down the Hankou Bund, where he said they must leave the Concession. James then walked through their ranks and with some attempt at dignity retired to his office. But frequently afterwards he heard himself called “That bloody fellow Marjoribanks, who let the Japs into the Concession!”
James helped several vulnerable Chinese friends escape but the cruelty of the Japanese occupation of Hankou left an indelible memory with him for the rest of his life. One of his motivations for his enthusiastic support for the European Community in later life was his memory of the horrors of war in Hankou. He escaped by plane from Hankou disguised as an Italian marine where his fluent Italian came in useful.
[edit] France (1939-40)
In 1939 James was posted as Vice-Consul to Marseilles, France.
[edit] References
- Unpublished memoirs by Sir James Marjoribanks. In the possession of his daughter Patricia Marjoribanks
[edit] Miscellany
- "Marjoribanks, Sir James Alexander Milne" from Who's Who, London: A & C Black.
