of St. James's but more often perhaps with results less satis-
factory. Whatever may be said for this system, however, there
can be no doubt that its considerable extension by the British
Government since the war has dealt a severe blow at the diplo-
matic service; for how can men be expected to serve a long and
arduous apprenticeship to a profession when they realize that
its great prizes are given to outsiders who have served no
apprenticeship at all?
Less obviously harmful was the outcome of the attacks from democratic quarters on the system of recruiting the diplomatic service in England. The object of this system, which demanded of candidates for examination nomination by the Foreign Secre- tary on the recommendation of persons of position and proof of the possession of an income of 400 a year, was to ensure the manning of the service by gentlemen, that is to say by those who had " at least had the opportunity of mixing in society where good manners are to be expected." In this system certain modifications were made as the result of a report issued in 1914 by the Royal Commission on the Civil Service. One of its recommendations was that the diplomatic establishment of the Foreign Office and the diplomatic corps abroad should be amalgamated, up to and including the grades of assistant under- secretary of state and minister of the lowest grade. This involved the abolition of the property qualification, which did not apply to the Foreign Office; and it was recommended that, in place of this, members of the service employed abroad should receive a suitable foreign allowance. After the publication of the findings of the Commission the recommendation of the Foreign Secretary was made dependent on the report of a board of selection composed of members of the Foreign Office and of the diplomatic service. In this there was nothing revolutionary; and the effect of the putting in force of these recommendations has been to widen the area of selection for the service. The danger lies in the denunciation as undemocratic of any principle of selection other than by the strict result of written examination. But the qualities required for a diplomatist, as Sir Ernest Satow rightly points out, cannot be ascertained by means of a written examination, which only affords evidence of knowledge already acquired, but does not reveal the essential ingredients of charac- ter (ii., p. 183). The character required for an efficient diplo- matist will always be that implied in the best sense of the word " gentleman," meaning a man honourable, well educated, of good address and manners, and able to hold his own without self-consciousness in any company.
The whole body of rules and conventions for the regularizing of international intercourse, which is known as International Law, is the work of diplomacy, and it is the work of diplomatists to apply them. It follows that to be efficient they must be trained, and it is folly to suggest that the place of the trained diplomatist can be taken by a popular representative without experience or technical equipment. As Mr. Denys P. Myers has pointed out, by far the greater mass of diplomatic work consists in giving particular application to rules already universally admitted, a matter straightforward enough, but demanding technical knowl- edge. The remaining portion of the work is disproportionately difficult, since it consists in adjusting disputes about matters to which the application of existing rules is doubtful, or to which they admittedly do not apply, or which stand beyond all rules as questions of high policy. In such debates the diplomatist is necessarily an advocate; his object is not justice, but the ad- vantage of the country he represents; and therefore " the art of which Socrates spoke, of making the worser cause appear the better, is inherent in every negotiation " (Myers, p. 298). Cer- tainly the attempt of President Wilson to set up a standard of Right as the " acid test " of all claims between nations has altered nothing in this, and can alter nothing so long as nations differ in their conceptions of what Right is. Diplomacy must continue to be, in this aspect of its activities, frank advocacy of particular interests, even though the dispute be heard before the high court of the League of Nations. But this advocacy has been subject to certain rules, and in the interests of peace which it has been the main purpose of diplomacy to preserve it
has in course of time elaborated a highly technical phraseology of which the object has been to convey a plain meaning without being unpardonably offensive. This method may be " circum- locutory," but it is more calculated to keep the peace than democratic " plain-speaking." A peccant Government informed that such and such an act will be considered " unfriendly " will perfectly understand the threat conveyed, and it will be easier for it to yield than if the threat had been uttered in more unequivocal fashion. In short, the conventional forms used in diplomatic intercourse have a very practical use. In the words of the late Mr. E. C. Grenville-Murray, " they regulate the precise words of respect and courtesy necessary to be used on every occasion: they deprive argument of its heat and expostulation of its acrimony." l
Secret Diplomacy and Democratic Control. In spite of President Wilson's denunciation of secret diplomacy, the negotiations before and after the Conference of Paris followed almost exactly the old practice. The organization of the conference itself was modelled closely on that of the Congress of Vienna in 1814. As at Vienna, all business of first-class importance was settled by the representatives of the Great Powers in secret conference, and the plenary sessions, to which alone the Press was admitted, were almost admittedly mere full-dress parades intended to produce an illusion of publicity. By a curious irony it was indeed President Wilson himself who was most violently attacked for neglecting the principle that diplomacy must always proceed in the public view. In the course of the long con- troversy between the President and the Foreign Relations Committee of the United States Senate about the Covenant of the League of Nations, which ended in the refusal to ratify the Treaty of Versailles, complaints were loud and reiterated that the Committee were kept completely in the dark as to the prog- ress of the negotiations in Paris, although under the Con- stitution their treaty-making power was coordinate with that of the President. It was also urged against President Wilson that, in order to secure his sole control of foreign affairs, he had largely extended the custom of superseding, for the purpose of particular negotiations, the accredited agents of the United States whose appointment was also subject to the advice and consent of the Senate by personal agents of his own (Corwin, p. 64). The victory of the Senate over the President in the matter of the Treaty of Versailles was widely assumed to have settled in favour of the Senate's view the long controversy it had raged intermittently since the days of Washington about the powers of the President and the Senate respectively over the conduct of foreign affairs. President Harding, however, was hardly in office before he asserted as vigorously as any of his predecessors the sole right of the President to conduct negotia- tions. The right of the Senate to ask for papers has long been, admitted, but the right of the President to refuse, in the public interest, to submit them seems equally clear (Corwin, p. 84 seq.).
The outcome of this controversy illustrates the fact that the war and the negotiations which followed have left the questions of secret diplomacy and of democratic control very much as they were before. So far as democratic control is concerned, wherever parliaments exist foreign relations come under their review, and can be controlled by their power of the purse; and it is their own fault if this control is not effective. " The ultimate misfortune of war," says Mr. Myers, " depends everywhere upon legislative financial support." But while control of broad policies is thus assured, there is no control of the processes of negotiation. It is, indeed, hard to see how such control could be attempted without creating a hundred difficulties and dangers for one which it would obviate. The point was admirably stated by Mr. Arthur Balfour in the House of Commons on March 19 1918, on a motion for a Standing Committee of Foreign Affairs:
" I think the British world perfectly understands the broad ends- for which British diplomacy works. . . . What is not simple, what is not plain, what is not easy, is the actual day-to-day carrying out of the negotiations by which these ends are to be attained. A Foreign Office and a diplomatic service are great instruments for preventing,
1 Embassies and Foreign Courts (and ed., 1856).
