Diplomacy is one of the highest of the political arts. In a
well-ordered commonwealth it would be held in the esteem due to a great
public service in whose hands the safety of the people largely lies;
and it would thus attract to its ranks its full share of national
ability and energy which for the most part to-day passes into other
professions. But the diplomatic service, at all times, and in almost
all countries, has suffered from lack of public appreciation: though
perhaps at no time has it had so many detractors as to-day. Its
almost unparalleled unpopularity is due to a variety of causes, some
of which are temporary and removable, while others must be permanent
in human affairs, for they were found to operate in the days when
the author of this little book shone in French diplomacy. The major
cause is public neglect; but it is also due, in no small measure, to
the prevalent confusion between policy, which is the substance, and
diplomacy proper, which is the process by which it is carried out. This
confusion exists not only in the popular mind, but even in the writings
of historians who might be expected to practise a better discernment.
Policy is the concern of governments. Responsibility therefore belongs
to the Secretary of State who directs policy and appoints the agents
of it. But the constitutional doctrine of ministerial responsibility
is not an unvarying reality. No one will maintain that Lord Cromer’s
success in Egypt was due to the wisdom of Whitehall, or to anything
but his own sterling qualities. Nor can a just judgment of our recent
Balkan diplomacy fail to assign a heavy share of the blame to the
incompetence of more than one ‘man on the spot.’ The truth is, that
the whole system, of which, in their different measure, Downing Street
and the embassies abroad are _both_ responsible parts, is not abreast
of the needs of the time, and will not be until Callières’s excellent
maxims become the common practice of the service.
These maxims are to be found in the little book of which a free
translation is here presented. François de Callières treats diplomacy
as the art practised by the _négotiateur_--a most apt name for the
diplomatist--in carrying out the instructions of statesmen and princes.
The very choice of the word _manière_ in his title shows that he
conceives of diplomacy as the servant, not the author, of policy; and
indeed his argument is not many pages old before he is heard insisting
that it is ‘the agent of high policy.’ Observance of this distinction
is the first condition of fruitful criticism. It is therefore worth
while, at the outset, to clear away the obscurity and confusion which
surround the subject, and thus, in some measure, to relieve both
diplomacy in general and the individual diplomatist in particular from
the burden of irrelevant and unjust criticism.
‘Secret diplomacy’ has played so large a part in recent public
discussion that the confusion between foreign policy and diplomacy
proper has only been worse confounded. And even where the critics of
diplomacy have restricted the range of their attack to the question
of the efficiency of our representation abroad, the nature of their
criticism leaves it to be supposed that diplomacy is the dazzling and
perilous craft which figures in the pages of Mr. Le Queux. The picture
of brilliant youths and cunning greybeards sedulously lying abroad for
the good of their country continues to fill the popular imagination,
though a reading of any one of the excellent memoirs of the great
diplomatists of the past would suffice to prove that Sir Henry Wotton’s
famous witticism far outran the truth. For every occasion on which
deceit has been practised, there are a dozen on which the negotiation
has followed the obvious course of a practical discussion in which
‘the application of intelligence and tact’ led to an agreement. In
substance, therefore, diplomacy demands the same qualities as any
other form of negotiation. Its true method bears a close resemblance
to a business transaction. The one essential difference between a
high commercial negotiation and a diplomatic transaction is that in
the former the contracting parties are constrained to observe certain
rules, and are bound not only by certain strict conventions but by
enforceable laws; in the latter case the parties recognise no bounds
to their claims and ambitions except those laid down by a concern for
their own convenience, or by the limits of their own military forces.
Hence the diplomatist gains an altogether fictitious eminence among
his fellow-men and assumes an excessive pride of office because he
represents a sovereign state which recognises no master.
Now a discussion of the problems raised by the unrestricted sovereignty
claimed by each nation in foreign affairs would carry this argument
far beyond the limits of diplomacy proper and must be left to those
who are now trying to find a firm basis for a League of Nations. But
since this claim is the parent cause of all armed conflict, it cannot
be entirely ignored; for as long as it persists it will exercise a
profound influence on the character of diplomacy itself, and has a
direct bearing on the question of the efficiency of the diplomatist.
The action of our representatives abroad carries with it the constant
alternative of peace and war. ‘The art of negotiating with princes,’
says Callières, ‘is so important that the fate of the greatest states
often depends upon the good or bad conduct of negotiations, and upon
the degree of capacity in the negotiators employed.’ The consciousness
that the negotiator is performing one of the functions of sovereignty
must give him a deep sense of responsibility and a constant concern for
his own efficiency. And the Home Government has the prior obligation,
in Callières’s words once more, to ‘examine with the greatest care the
natural or acquired qualities of those citizens whom they despatch on
missions to Foreign States.’
The epigram which tells us that nations have the governments they
deserve has a close bearing on this aspect of diplomacy. The main
question is the efficiency of the service, which has received but
little public attention owing to the popularity of the campaign against
the secrecy of diplomatic action. The secrecy of diplomacy is commonly
held to be the accomplice of European militarism; and many of those
who yearn for a better world after the war hope that by letting in
light upon the manœuvres of the Great Powers their evil designs may be
checked before they create those recurring crises of animosity with
which we were so familiar before the war. There is so much obvious
truth in this view that even _The Times_ acknowledged it thus: ‘Who,
then, makes war? The answer is to be found in the Chancelleries of
Europe, among the men who have too long played with human lives as
pawns in a game of chess, who have become so enmeshed in formulas and
the jargon of diplomacy that they have ceased to be conscious of the
poignant realities with which they trifle. And thus war will continue
to be made until the great masses who are the sport of professional
schemers say the word which shall bring, not eternal peace, for that
is impossible, but a determination that wars shall be fought only in a
just and righteous and vital cause’ (_The Times_, 23rd November 1912).
The justification of the growing demand for popular control of foreign
policy could not be more succinctly put.
In the customary argument against diplomatic secrecy, however, there is
some confusion of thought. It is against secret _policies_, in which
the national liability may be unlimited, that the only genuine protest
can be raised; for such policies are the very negation of democracy,
and the denial of the most fundamental of all popular rights, namely,
that the citizen shall know on what terms his country may ask him to
lay down his life. But this justification of popular control does
not presuppose the publication of diplomatic negotiations. On the
contrary, it rests on the assumption that the People and Parliament
will know where to draw the line between necessary control in matters
of principle and the equally necessary discretionary freedom of the
expert in negotiation. It follows, therefore, that the case for reform
is only weakened by those who make indiscriminate attacks against
the whole Diplomatic Service--how richly deserved in some cases, how
flagrantly unjust in others--and especially by those who profess to
believe that the machinery of diplomacy could be made to run more
smoothly by publicity. The modern Press is not so happy a commentator
as all that; and we may here recall Napoleon’s apposite reflection:
‘_Le canon a tué la féodalité: l’encre tuera la société moderne_.’ If
it is necessary for the public welfare that foreign policy should be
known and intelligently discussed by the people whom it so closely
concerns, it is just as necessary that the people should not meddle
with the actual process of diplomacy, but, having made sure of getting
the best of their public servants in their Foreign Service, should
confidently leave such transactions undisturbed in the hands of the
expert. In all the activities of government that is clearly the proper
division of labour between the common people and the expert adviser;
and in no department should it be more scrupulously observed than in
foreign affairs.
Readers of this little book--which Sir Ernest Satow recently called
‘a mine of political wisdom’--will quickly realise how much this
introductory review of modern diplomacy owes to the suggestive maxims
of François de Callières. And if they receive as much stimulus and
pleasure from the following pages as the translator has enjoyed in
preparing them, Louis Fourteenth’s plenipotentiary should gain a host
of new friends.