Palairet was posted to Rome in 1906, Vienna in 1908, Paris in 1913, and Athens in 1917. In 1918 he was posted back to Paris for the Peace Conference. After a brief time in the Foreign Office in London, he returned to Paris in 1920 with the rank of First Secretary. In 1922 he was posted as Counsellor to Tokyo where he and his family survived the Great Kanto earthquake on 1 September 1923, which devastated Tokyo and destroyed the British embassy. He moved on to Peking in 1925, returned to London in 1926, and returned to Rome again in 1928.