page_title: Alexander Cadogan
section_title: United Nations
hierarchical_section_title: Alexander Cadogan / United Nations
caption_attribution_description: English: British diplomat Alexander Cadogan (1884-1968) as UK representative to the League of Nations in 1933.
context_page_description: Sir Alexander Montagu George Cadogan OM GCMG KCB was a British diplomat and civil servant. He was Permanent Under-Secretary for Foreign Affairs from 1938 to 1946. His long tenure of the Permanent Secretary's office makes him one of the central figures of British policy before and during the Second World War. His diaries are a source of great value and give a sharp sense of the man and his life. Like most senior officials at the Foreign Office, he was bitterly critical of the appeasement policies of the 1930s but admitted that until British rearmament was better advanced, there were few other options. In particular, he stressed that without an American commitment to joint defence against Japan, Britain would be torn between the eastern and western spheres. Conflict with Germany would automatically expose Britain's Asian Empire to Japanese aggression.
context_section_description: At the end of the war Cadogan had hoped for the Washington embassy but it went to another capable career diplomat, Sir Archibald Clark Kerr. Instead, it is probably his experience with the League of Nations and his prominent role at Dumbarton Oaks that made Clement Attlee appoint Cadogan the first Permanent Representative of the United Kingdom to the United Nations. He served in this capacity from 1946 to 1950. During his time at the UN, as David Dilks points out, "British diplomacy had to be conducted from a precarious position of over-commitment and economic instability." Cadogan expressed great frustration with the inflexibility of his Soviet counterparts, who were forbidden from mixing with other delegations or informal exchanges of views. At one point, he asked himself, "How can ten men discuss with a ventriloquist's doll?" He saw many parallels between Soviet actions at the beginning of the Cold War and those of the Germans on the eve of the Second World War. He remarked to Winston Churchill, "What forces itself on one's attention is the degree to which everything favours the evildoer, if he is blatant enough. Any honest Government fights (in peacetime) with two hands tied behind its back. The brilliant blatancy of the Russians is something that we can admire but cannot emulate. It gives them a great advantage." Although he was never celebrated as a public figure, Cadogan enjoyed great prestige within diplomatic circles. He was widely respected for his ability, character and experience. He and his wife cultivated a large and varied number of friends by entertaining at their Long Island home, Hillandale.
caption: Cadogan in 1933.
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