INTRODUCTION
Diplomacyis 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 betweenpolicy, 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 arebothresponsible 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 artpractised by thenégotiateur—a most apt name for the diplomatist—in carrying out the instructions of statesmen and princes. The very choice of the wordmanièrein 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 andcunning 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 excessivepride 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 evenThe Timesacknowledged 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 theytrifle. 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 secretpolicies, 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 ErnestSatow 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.
A. F. WHYTE.