out and to estimate all the factors. But at the several crises of international relations, and in the decisive leading-up to them, it is the more particular factors, or general factors in particular forms, that are at work, and that are to be discovered, scrutinized, and estimated; and here most of all in history it is necessary to get to the sources, and necessary at times to admit that the sources are not wholly adequate, because they have not been, and may never be, fully revealed. It is necessary also to remember that the sources are not in one land only, and that the tinctures are from mixed and varied soils. It is more than useless—it is culpably misleading—for a writer to take only one set of dispatches, or those of one State only, when he is expounding some development, or even a mere phase, in foreign policy. He must collate the dispatches of a State to several capitals, and set these against those of foreign Powers, on the question that is being considered. The inquirer, for example, into the immediate antecedents of 'the Diplomatic Revolution' of the eighteenth century will find, at the crisis of things towards the close of 1755, more to engage his attention at Petersburg than at London or Berlin, Paris or Vienna. The volumes of the French Recueil des Instructions données aux Ambassadeurs et Ministres de France depuis les Traités de Westphalie jusqu'à la Révolution française[1] afford an excellent opportunity for partial collation in the study of diplomacy, and for the exercise of historical caution.
Not least must the inquirer observe and faithfully report whether the dispatches and other official papers which he presents and builds upon are complete or merely fragmentary Does he find, or can he himself divine, the ominous word 'extract' in the dispatches he reads? Are the dispatches, as published, such as the late Lord Salisbury once described:
- ↑ 'Publié sous les auspices de la Commission des Archives diplomatiques au Ministère des Affaires Étrangères', 1884 and subsequent years.
