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 . As an experienced middle-rank diplomatist , Palairet then became minister to Romania in December 1929 . Here their charm and hospitality and keen interest in Romanian culture won the Palairets a wide circle of friends . Prince Carol , who returned from exile and became king in 1930 , showed no grudge at having been requested to leave England in 1928 because of his alleged involvement in a plot to place him on the Romanian throne . Good Anglo-Romanian relations , both political and commercial , were established , but German economic and political penetration had become menacing before Palairet left for Stockholm in 1935 . &mdash; Peter Neville in '' Oxford Dictionary of National Biography '' Palairet was minister to Sweden 1935 – 37 before being posted to Vienna as minister to Austria in December 1937 . This was a critical time for Austria . Palairet reported to the Foreign Office that Hitler had ' raved like a madman ' at Austrian Chancellor Kurt Schuschnigg during their meeting at Berchtesgaden on 12 February 1938 . There was nothing that Britain could do : the '' Anschluss '' followed on 11 – 12 March and Palairet was recalled to London . He was sent as the second UK delegate ( with Lord Winterton ) to the Évian Conference on Jewish refugees on 6 – 13 July . In September – December 1938 he was sent to take charge of the legation in Bucharest because of the illness of his successor as minister there , Sir Reginald Hoare . In June 1939 he was posted to Athens again as minister to Greece . When the German army approached Athens in April 1941 the British Embassy was evacuated , but Palairet remained accredited to the Greek government in exile and accompanied them to Crete and then , after the fall of Crete in May 1941 , to Cairo . His post was upgraded to Ambassador in 1942 before he retired in April 1943 . However , he returned to the Foreign Office as a temporary Assistant Under-Secretary , dealing with matters concerning prisoners of war , until July 1948
Great Kanto earthquake
1923 Great Kantō earthquake
Michael Palairet