I AM AWARE that the title I have given this book is open to misconstruction. It suggests an official, soured by failure, who feels that his talents have not received due recognition. I hasten to say that this is not the meaning I wish to give it. The sense in which I use the expression ‘all ambition spent’ is true of nine out of ten officials who have reached the end of a longish career. Indeed, it is true of most elderly people whose constructive years lie behind them. The young man's ambition is to ‘get on’ in life, to make a name for himself, to stand out from the crowd. He realises dimly that it is not an easy task, that if there is really plenty of room at the top, there is only one top rung of the ladder from which to step on to the highest floor. But somehow he is going to get here. At forty, if he has common sense, he knows whether he will or will not. At sixty he has got there or he is more or less comfortably installed on a lower floor. But one thing is certain: he has used up or discarded most of the ambitions with which he had started out. If, as he should be, he is somewhat of a philosopher, he will be content to have made the best use of the brains with which nature endowed him and to have achieved a fair modicum of success. His doings may not have attracted general attention but what then? So long as he himself feels that he has done a good job; that is all that is necessary.

For myself, I have no complaints against either providence or the higher authorities. I look back with pleasure on the thirty-eight years that I spent in the Consular service and, if I had the opportunity, I would not want them changed.