Paul Claudel

Paul Claudel combined diplomacy with a major career as a poet and playwright. Born in 1868, he experienced a religious conversion at Notre-Dame in 1886, and Catholic belief became central to his writing. He entered the foreign service in 1890 and began with consular assignments in New York and Boston. Long service in China, followed by European and Brazilian postings and an ambassadorship in Japan, gave him experience of commercial as well as political affairs. ^{1, 2}

His Washington appointment brought him back to the United States in 1927. On 6 February 1928 he signed a new Franco-American arbitration treaty with Acting Secretary of State Robert Olds. It provided for investigation or adjudication of disputes that ordinary diplomacy could not resolve, while retaining exceptions involving domestic jurisdiction, third countries, the Monroe Doctrine, and France's League of Nations obligations. ³

Claudel also represented France in the negotiations over renouncing war. In January 1928 he explained to Secretary of State Frank Kellogg how an American proposal for a multilateral agreement differed from France's original bilateral initiative. He emphasized that any wider pact had to accommodate France's existing commitments under the League Covenant and the Locarno agreements. ⁴

Economic reporting occupied much of his embassy work. In a dispatch of 6 November 1929, he analyzed the Wall Street panic and recalled earlier warnings that he and the financial attaché had sent about speculative borrowing. He described the Federal Reserve's attempts to restrain speculation, but cautioned that the crisis was too recent to explain fully or to predict all its effects. ⁵

Claudel finished his diplomatic career in Brussels and retired in 1935. His plays included L'Annonce faite à Marie and Le Soulier de satin, while his later work increasingly explored scripture, art, and religious thought. He entered the Académie française in 1946 and died in 1955. ^{2, 1}