further. In the abstract the success of the policy of a minister in a democratic state must ultimately rest upon the support of public opinion; yet the necessity for this support has in the conduct of foreign affairs its peculiar dangers. In the difficult game of diplomacy a certain reticence is always necessary. Secret sources of information would be dried up were they to be lightly revealed; a plain exposition of policy would often give an undue advantage to the other party to a negotiation. Thus, even in Great Britain, the diplomatic correspondence laid before parliament is carefully edited, and all governments are jealous of granting access to their modern archives. Yet a representative assembly is apt to be resentful of such reservations. Its members know little or nothing of the conditions under which foreign affairs are conducted, and they are not unnaturally irritated by explanations which seem to lack candour or completeness. Canning himself had experience of this in the affair of the capture of the Danish fleet at Copenhagen; and Castlereagh’s diplomacy was hampered by the bitter attacks of an opposition which accused him, with little justice, of pursuing a policy which he dared not reveal in its full scope to parliament. Moreover, the appeal to public opinion may be used as a diplomatic weapon for ends no less “selfish” than any aimed at by the old diplomacy. Bismarck, whose statesmanship was at least as cynical as that of Metternich, was a master of the art of taking the world into his confidence—when it suited him to do so; and the “reptile press,” hired to give a seemingly independent support to his policy, was one of his most potent weapons. So far the only necessary consequence of the growth of the power of public opinion on the art of diplomacy has been to extend the sphere of its application; it is but one more factor to be dealt with; and experience has proved that it is subject to the wiles of a skilful diplomatist no less than were the princes and statesmen with whom the old diplomacy was solely concerned.
The third factor making for change—the revolution in the means of communication which has brought all the world into closer touch—remains to be discussed. It is obvious that before the invention of the telegraph, the diplomatic agent was in a far more responsible position than he is now, when he can, in most cases, receive immediate instructions from his government on difficult questions as they arise. When communication was still slow there was often no time to await instructions, or the instructions when they arrived were not seldom already out of date and had to be set aside on the minister’s own responsibility. It would, however, be easy to exaggerate the importance of this change as affecting the character and status of diplomatic agents. It is true that the tendency has been for ministers of foreign affairs to hold the threads of diplomacy in their own hands to a far greater extent than was formerly the case; but they must still depend for information and advice on the “man on the spot,” and the success of their policy largely depends upon his qualities of discretion and judgment. The growth of democracy, moreover, has given to the ambassador a new and peculiar importance; for he represents not only the sovereign to the sovereign, but the nation to the nation; and, as a succession of notable American ambassadors to Great Britain has proved, he may by his personal qualities do a large amount to remove the prejudices and ignorances which stand as a barrier between the nations. It marks an immense advance in the comity of international intercourse when the representatives of friendly powers are no longer regarded as “spies rather than ambassadors,” to be “quickly heard and dismissed,” as Philippe de Commines would have them, but as agreeable guests to be parted from with regret.
As to the qualifications for an ambassador, it is clearly impossible to lay down a general rule, for the same qualities are obviously not required in Washington as in Vienna, nor in Paris as in Pekin. Yet the effort to depict the ideal ambassador bulks largely in the works of the earlier theorists, and the demands they make are sufficiently alarming. Ottaviano Maggi, himself a diplomatist of the brilliant age of the Renaissance, has left us in his De legato (Hanoviae, 1596) his idea of what an ambassador should be. He must not only be a good Christian but a learned theologian; he must be a philosopher, well versed in Aristotle and Plato, and able at a moment’s notice to solve in correct dialectical form the most abstruse problems; he must be well read in the classics, and an expert in mathematics, architecture, music, physics and civil and canon law. He must not only know how to write and speak Latin with classical refinement, but he must be a master of Greek, Spanish, French, German and Turkish. He must have a sound knowledge of history, geography and the science of war; but at the same time is not to neglect the poets, and never to be without his Homer. Add to this that he must be well born, rich and of a handsome presence, and we have a portrait of a diplomatist whose original can hardly have existed even in that age of brilliant versatility. The Dutchman Frederikus de Marselaer, in his κηρυκεῖον sive legationum insigne (Antwerp, 1618), is scarcely less exacting than the Venetian. His ideal ambassador is a nobleman of fine presence and in the prime of life, famous, rich, munificent, abstemious, not violent, nor quarrelsome, nor morose, no flatterer, learned, eloquent, witty without being talkative, a good linguist, widely read, prudent and cautious, but brave and—as he adds somewhat superfluously—many-sided.
With these theoretical perfections one or two instances of the qualifications demanded by the exigencies of practical politics may be cited by way of illuminating contrast. At the court of the empress Elizabeth of Russia good looks were a surer means of diplomatic success than all the talents and virtues, and the princess of Zerbst (mother of the empress Catherine II.) wrote to Frederick of Prussia advising him to replace his elderly ambassador by a handsome young man with a good complexion; and the essential qualification for an ambassador to Switzerland, Germany, Poland, Denmark and Russia used to be that he should be able to drink the native diplomatists, seasoned from babyhood to strong liquors, under the table.
History.—In its widest sense the history of diplomacy is that of the intercourse between nations, in so far as this has not been a mere brute struggle for the mastery;[1] in a narrower sense, with which the present article is alone concerned, it is that of the methods and spirit of diplomatic intercourse and of the character and status of diplomatic agents. Earlier writers on the office and functions of ambassadors, such as Gentilis or Archbishop Germonius, conscientiously trace their origin to God himself, who created the angels to be his legates; and they fortify their arguments by copious examples drawn from ancient history, sacred and profane. But, whatever the influence upon it of earlier practice, modern diplomacy really dates from the rise of permanent missions, and the consequent development of the diplomatic hierarchy as an international institution. Of this the first beginnings are traceable to the 15th century and to Italy. There had, of course, during the middle ages been embassies and negotiations; but the embassies had been no more than temporary missions directed to a particular end and conducted by ecclesiastics or nobles of a dignity appropriate to each occasion; there were neither permanent diplomatic agents nor a professional diplomatic class. To the evolution of such a class the Italy of the Renaissance, the nursing-ground of modern statecraft, gave the first impetus. This was but natural; for Italy, with its numerous independent states, between which there existed a lively intercourse and a yet livelier rivalry, anticipated in miniature the modern states’ system of Europe. In feudal Europe there had been little room for diplomacy; but in northern and central Italy feudalism had never taken root, and in the struggles of the peninsula diplomacy had early played a part as great as, or greater than, war. Where all were struggling for the mastery, the existence of each depended upon alliances and counter-alliances, of which the object was the maintenance of the balance of power. In this school there was trained a notable succession of men of affairs. Thus, in the 13th and 14th centuries Florence counted among her envoys Dante, Petrarch and Boccaccio, and later on could boast of agents such as Capponi, Vettori, Guicciardini and Machiavelli. Papal Rome, too, as was to be expected, had always been a fruitful nursing-mother of diplomatists; and some
- ↑ e.g. A History of Diplomacy in the International Development of Europe, by D. J. Hill (London and New York, 1905).
