38
Diplomacy and the
We are perhaps reduced to the half-cynical maxim and device of Torcy, that the best way of deceiving foreign Courts is always to speak the truth. Or, are we led to some via media, in the words of advice of a senior in diplomacy to a junior: 'Take snuff often and slowly, sit with your back to the light,[1] and speak the truth; the rest you will learn by observing your older colleagues'?[2] Does that really mean to seniors priority in niceties of conduct that shall not be Machiavellian, as well as in resolute avoidance of the mixture of a lie which, Bacon tells us, doth ever add pleasure? Halifax's 'Trimmer'[3] adored the goddess Truth and all who worshipped her, but
- ↑ The Emperor Charles V, according to the picture of him drawn by Sir Richard Moryson, October 7, 1552, had little need to adopt this device: 'And yet hath he a face, that is as unwont to disclose any hid affection of his heart, as any face that ever I met withal in my life; for there all white colours which, in changing themselves, are wont in others to bring a man certain word, how his errand is liked or misliked, have no place in his countenance; his eyes only do bewray as much as can be picked out of him. He maketh me oft think of Solomon's saying: Heaven is high, the earth is deep, a king's heart is unsearchable; there is in him almost nothing that speaketh, besides his tongue.'—Sir Richard Moryson to the Lords of Council, Hardwicke, Miscellaneous State Papers (1778), i. 51. William I, King of Prussia, who became German Emperor, did not satisfy this canon of kingcraft. 'The King told me an untruth to-day', said Bismarck on November 29, 1870: 'I asked him if the bombardment' of Paris 'was not to commence, and he replied that he had ordered it. But I knew immediately that that was not true. I know him. He cannot lie, or at least not in such a way that it cannot be detected. He at once changes colour, and it was particularly noticeable when he replied to my question to-day. When I looked at him straight into his eyes he could not stand it.'—Busch, Bismarck (1898), i. 337.
- ↑ Kolle, Betrachtungen über Diplomatie, 278, quoted by Bernard, 149.
- ↑ For a short statement of the use of the word by Halifax see his Preface to The Character of a Trimmer: '… there is a third Opinion of those, who conceive it would do as well, if the Boat went even, without endangering the Passengers.'
