intermediaries, and by doing so it has led to an increase of steadiness, of continuity and of general reliability in the conduct of foreign affairs, All that is to the good. But telegraphic advice may also at times be obscure and misleading. We should, moreover, be going against the recorded testimony of ambassadors of the nineteenth century themselves, if we were to conclude that the need for judgement and discretion—for acting on the spot in the right way at the right time—has been lessened thereby, that there has been much lessening of the sense of responsibility, or that the Foreign Office and the telegraph can ever take the place of personal intercourse with the Sovereign abroad and his representatives.[1]
With regard to diplomatic morality and the factors making for success in diplomacy, opinions differ. The first Earl Grey professed himself a great lover of morality, but 'the intercourse of nations canno'’, he said, 'be strictly regulated by that rule'.[2] 'If they lie to you', said Louis XI to two of his envoys, 'you lie still more to them'.[3] Metternich, regarding whose capacity for lying Napoleon was in no doubt, has recorded in his Autobiographical Memoir that he had never been afraid of succumbing morally, In an attempt to propound in a few principles the meaning of politics and diplomacy, he
- ↑ See Appendix, pp. 251–3. See also First Report from the Select Committee on Diplomatic and Consular Services: Commons Papers, 1871, vii. 197, p. xiv.
- ↑ Acton, Introduction to Burd, Il Principe, xxvii. 'By plausible and blameless paths men are drawn to the doctrine of the justice of History, of judgment by results, the nursling of the nineteenth century, from which a sharp incline leads to The Prince,' xxvi–xxvii.
- ↑ Cf. the following from a letter describing a stage in the tortuous negotiations that led to the Treaty of Troyes: 'Cirtes alle the ambassadors, that we dele wyth, ben yncongrue, that is to say, yn olde maner of speche in England, "they ben double and fals:" whyth whiche maner of men I prey God lete neuer no trew mon be coupled with',—Ellis, Original Letters (2nd series, 1827), i. 77.
