The Practice of Diplomacy/Introduction
INTRODUCTION
DIPLOMACY is one of the highest of the political arts. In a well-ordered commonwealth it would be held in the esteem due to a great public service in whose hands the safety of the people largely lies; and it would thus attract to its ranks its full share of national ability and energy which for the most part to-day passes into other professions. But the diplomatic service, at all times, and in almost all countries, has suffered from lack of public appreciation: though perhaps at no time has it had so many detractors as to-day. Its almost unparalleled unpopularity is due to a variety of causes, some of which are temporary and removable, while others must be permanent in human affairs, for they were found to operate in the days when the author of this little book shone in French diplomacy. The major cause is public neglect; but it is also due, in no small measure, to the prevalent confusion between policy, which is the substance, and diplomacy proper, which is the process by which it is carried out. This confusion exists not only in the popular mind, but even in the writings of historians who might be expected to practise a better discernment. Policy is the concern of governments. Responsibility therefore belongs to the Secretary of State who directs policy and appoints the agents of it. But the constitutional doctrine of ministerial responsibility is not an unvarying reality. No one will maintain that Lord Cromer's success in Egypt was due to the wisdom of Whitehall, or to anything but his own sterling qualities. Nor can a just judgment of our recent Balkan diplomacy fail to assign a heavy share of the blame to the incompetence of more than one 'man on the spot.' The truth is, that the whole system, of which, in their different measure, Downing Street and the embassies abroad are both responsible parts, is not abreast of the needs of the time, and will not be until Callières's excellent maxims become the common practice of the service.
These maxims are to be found in the little book of which a free translation is here presented. François de Callières treats diplomacy as the art practised by the négotiateur—a most apt name for the diplomatist—in carrying out the instructions of statesmen and princes. The very choice of the word manière in his title shows that he conceives of diplomacy as the servant, not the author, of policy; and indeed his argument is not many pages old before he is heard insisting that it is 'the agent of high policy.' Observance of this distinction is the first condition of fruitful criticism. It is therefore worth while, at the outset, to clear away the obscurity and confusion which surround the subject, and thus, in some measure, to relieve both diplomacy in general and the individual diplomatist in particular from the burden of irrelevant and unjust criticism.
'Secret diplomacy' has played so large a part in recent public discussion that the confusion between foreign policy and diplomacy proper has only been worse confounded. And even where the critics of diplomacy have restricted the range of their attack to the question of the efficiency of our representation abroad, the nature of their criticism leaves it to be supposed that diplomacy is the dazzling and perilous craft which figures in the pages of Mr. Le Queux. The picture of brilliant youths and cunning greybeards sedulously lying abroad for the good of their country continues to fill the popular imagination, though a reading of any one of the excellent memoirs of the great diplomatists of the past would suffice to prove that Sir Henry Wotton's famous witticism far outran the truth. For every occasion on which deceit has been practised, there are a dozen on which the negotiation has followed the obvious course of a practical discussion in which 'the application of intelligence and tact' led to an agreement. In substance, therefore, diplomacy demands the same qualities as any other form of negotiation. Its true method bears a close resemblance to a business transaction. The one essential difference between a high commercial negotiation and a diplomatic transaction is that in the former the contracting parties are constrained to observe certain rules, and are bound not only by certain strict conventions but by enforceable laws; in the latter case the parties recognise no bounds to their claims and ambitions except those laid down by a concern for their own convenience, or by the limits of their own military forces. Hence the diplomatist gains an altogether fictitious eminence among his fellow-men and assumes an excessive pride of office because he represents a sovereign state which, recognises no master.
Now a discussion of the problems raised by the unrestricted sovereignty claimed by each nation in foreign affairs would carry this argument far beyond the limits of diplomacy proper and must be left to those who are now trying to find a firm basis for a League of Nations. But since this claim is the parent cause of all armed conflict, it cannot be entirely ignored; for as long as it persists it will exercise a profound influence on the character of diplomacy itself, and has a direct bearing on the question of the efficiency of the diplomatist. The action of our representatives abroad carries with it the constant alternative of peace and war. 'The art of negotiating with princes,' says Callières, 'is so important that the fate of the greatest states often depends upon the good or bad conduct of negotiations, and upon the degree of capacity in the negotiators employed.' The consciousness that the negotiator is performing one of the functions of sovereignty must give him a deep sense of responsibility and a constant concern for his own efficiency. And the Home Government has the prior obligation, in Callières's words once more, to 'examine with the greatest care the natural or acquired qualities of those citizens whom they despatch on missions to Foreign States.'
The epigram which tells us that nations have the governments they deserve has a close bearing on this aspect of diplomacy. The main question is the efficiency of the service, which has received but little public attention owing to the popularity of the campaign against the secrecy of diplomatic action. The secrecy of diplomacy is commonly held to be the accomplice of European militarism; and many of those who yearn for a better world after the war hope that by letting in light upon the manœuvres of the Great Powers their evil designs may be checked before they create those recurring crises of animosity with which we were so familiar before the war. There is so much obvious truth in this view that even The Times acknowledged it thus: 'Who, then, makes war? The answer is to be found in the Chancelleries of Europe, among the men who have too long played with human lives as pawns in a game of chess, who have become so enmeshed in formulas and the jargon of diplomacy that they have ceased to be conscious of the poignant realities with which they trifle. And thus war will continue to be made until the great masses who are the sport of professional schemers say the word which shall bring, not eternal peace, for that is impossible, but a determination that wars shall be fought only in a just and righteous and vital cause' (The Times, 23rd November 1912). The justification of the growing demand for popular control of foreign policy could not be more succinctly put.
In the customary argument against diplomatic secrecy, however, there is some confusion of thought. It is against secret policies, in which the national liability may be unlimited, that the only genuine protest can be raised; for such policies are the very negation of democracy, and the denial of the most fundamental of all popular rights, namely, that the citizen shall know on what terms his country may ask him to lay down his life. But this justification of popular control does not presuppose the publication of diplomatic negotiations. On the contrary, it rests on the assumption that the People and Parliament will know where to draw the line between necessary control in matters of principle and the equally necessary discretionary freedom of the expert in negotiation. It follows, therefore, that the case for reform is only weakened by those who make indiscriminate attacks against the whole Diplomatic Service—how richly deserved in some cases, how flagrantly unjust in others—and especially by those who profess to believe that the machinery of diplomacy could be made to run more smoothly by publicity. The modern Press is not so happy a commentator as all that; and we may here recall Napoleon's apposite reflection: 'Le canon a tué la féodalité: l'encre tuera la société moderne.' If it is necessary for the public welfare that foreign policy should be known and intelligently discussed by the people whom it so closely concerns, it is just as necessary that the people should not meddle with the actual process of diplomacy, but, having made sure of getting the best of their public servants in their Foreign Service, should confidently leave such transactions undisturbed in the hands of the expert. In all the activities of government that is clearly the proper division of labour between the common people and the expert adviser; and in no department should it be mgre scrupulously observed than in foreign affairs.
The question then is how to make sure of getting the best of our public servants in the Foreign Service, and having got them there to give free rein to their ability by engaging them in appr6priate work. The Foreign Office is alive to the necessity of reform, and the speeches made in the House of Commons on 3ist July 1918 show the lines on which reform ought to proceed. The details there discussed must be left for treatment in the Press; and it is perhaps not too much to say that the essence of reform lies as much in a change of attitude and of temper in the diplomatic personnel as in the introduction of up-to-date machinery. No public service has undergone so little change in recent years as the Foreign Office. British embassies are still strongholds of tradition; and although the war has already in certain cases revolutionised their domestic administration, we can still say with truth of them what George Meredith said of the Habsburg dynasty, 'What but knocks will ever convince the Black-Yellow Head that we are no longer in the first years of the eighteenth century.'
Till the other day the Foreign Office and its servants abroad contrived to remain aloof from the currents of thought which have carried reforms into each of the great departments of state in turn. The reasons for this state of affairs are two: first, the fact that the whole Foreign Service is small in numbers and held together by a combination of discipline and the strong esprit de corps of the caste from which it has been recruited; second, that criticism of the institution, even when well informed, has been sporadic, and has lacked the driving force of an instructed public opinion. A competent writer, himself a diplomatist, commented on an article on diplomacy in The New Europe in the following terms: 'It is doubtful whether such broad criticisms, fundamental and incontestable as they are, will avail to secure the reforms they imply; for lay criticism usually fails for lack of technical knowledge, while discipline, loyalty, and tradition combine to impose reticence upon members of the institution itself. Censure is apt to be disarmed by a natural sympathy for the overworked and conscientious public servant; and reform is postponed on the plea that a crisis is no time for judicious changes. Most Englishmen would prefer to drown on a familiar though worn-out steed rather than change horses in mid-stream. Thus the crisis is allowed to pass, and with it the memory of the shortcomings which produced it. With the return to normal conditions criticism lapses once more into its former sporadic vein, and public interest wanes.'
The effect of public opinion on the great departments of state may be gauged in a comparison between the Navy and the Diplomatic Service. The latter is almost as vital to our security as the former, and yet the public mind passes it by with nothing more than an occasional curse. Before the war there was a fatal divorce between Defence and Foreign Policy. We insisted on having the ships, but we neglected to study the very European events which might compel us to use them. Absorbed in the preoccupation of urgent domestic problems we left our foreign affairs behind the closed doors of the Foreign Office, and hardly troubled even to inquire into the manner in which the Diplomatic Service discharged its duty. Our negligence should, therefore, give us pause before we endorse some of the sweeping verdicts so often passed against our diplomacy. The Foreign Office and its agents have a heavy account to meet, which is only in part due to the difficulties of co-operation in an alliance. But justice compels us to admit that the magnitude of certain failures is the measure of our own neglect. A vigilant public opinion is the best guarantee of efficiency in any public service.
Public opinion is now as wide awake as we can ever hope it will be, and the Foreign Office is taking its own steps. It has already greatly strengthened its personnel by a timely reinforcement of the Political Intelligence Department, and Lord Robert Cecil's speech (3ist July 1918) gave promise of still wider reforms. The substance of these reforms consists in: (a) throwing open the gates of diplomacy to competent candidates irrespective of wealth or social position; (b) paying a genuine living wage to all diplomatists from the date of their entry into service; (c) providing more appropriate tests of merit on entry and for promotion; (d) organising the service in such a manner as to set the junior diplomatist free for political work; (e) setting up a system of promotion and retiral which will give young ability a reasonable hope of occupying responsible posts before dotage or despair overtakes it; (f) establishing a strong Appointment-Committee at the Foreign Office, which will send the right man to the right place and destroy favouritism. These six reforms are indispensable to the future health of the Diplomatic Service; and, though there is reason to believe that they are now ripe for execution, their adoption will depend upon the pressure of public opinion. It is therefore important that the partisans of reform should spare no effort to keep them in the public view, especially at the present time when the daily spectacle of great events is apt to distract attention from them.
There is, however, another and more radical reform without which these six proposals would have but little influence on the personnel of the Foreign Office itself. The Foreign Office must be amalgamated with the Diplomatic Service, so that, whether at home or abroad, the diplomatist becomes a member of one undivided service. The principle of interchangeability primarily affects the office at home, and would often carry the civil servant in Whitehall whither he would not. At present an official in the Foreign Office need never go abroad unless he likes, while the diplomatist can never take up work at home unless he can persuade a friend in the Foreign Office to exchange with him. Thus the system works on the principle of 'jam every other day' for the diplomatist. The result is that the Foreign Office is largely manned by officials who know but little of the conditions of diplomatic action in foreign countries, while the Diplomatic Service remains a stranger to its own native country. Sir Robert Morier truly said that 'the Diplomatic Service needs to be nationalised, and the Foreign Office to be internationalised.' The amalgamation of the two Services is the only road to that result, and effective amalgamation means the compulsory interchange of personnel at regular intervals between the office at home and its missions abroad. No reformer can be satisfied with any proposal which falls short of that aim. The Foreign Office bears the same relation to the Diplomatic Service as the Admiralty to the Service afloat; and since compulsory interchange is the very life of the Navy, its good effects may be expected in the analogous case of our Foreign Service.
When these reforms have been adopted they will recreate the Diplomatic Service only in the measure in which their spirit animates the Foreign Secretary and his ambassadors. The Service is like a great tree full of ancient and decaying boughs, which should have been cut away long ago in order to give the tree itself new life. There is great talent hidden within it even now, and nowhere are there to be found more ardent advocates of reform than among junior diplomatists. They have suffered from depression and discouragement in their own persons; and they would be the first to welcome the new era. In such a matter as the intelligent observation of political phenomena in the country of their service, for instance, many of them only await the necessary instruction and encouragement from headquarters. The point to observe is that the present organisation of the Diplomatic Service provides little time or opportunity, and practically no encouragement for such work. Before the Royal Commission on the Civil Service Sir Arthur Hardinge, British Ambassador at Madrid, gave the following opinion in evidence: 'I think it is exceedingly difficult both for Foreign Embassies in London and for British Embassies abroad to have any real or close touch with democratic movements in the modern world.' This is a weighty opinion, but it is coloured by the ambassador's training under what I may call the old regime; and a comparatively brief experiment in the new method would probably show that the difficulty is not insurmountable. The advantage of surmounting it is surely obvious. I hope therefore that the Foreign Office will make the attempt.
That this plea is no mere individual whim may be proved by calling two powerful witnesses against Sir Arthur Hardinge. On page 46 of the present volume Monsieur de Callières expresses the following opinion, and gives the following advice:—
'There are, for instance, countries where it is not enough to be in agreement with the prince and his ministers, because there are other parties who share the national sovereignty with him and who have the power to resist his Decisions or to make him change them. Of this state of affairs we have an excellent example in England, where the authority of Parliament frequently obliges the King to make peace or war against his own wish; or again in Poland, where the general Diets have an even more extended power, in which one single vote in the Diet may bring to nought the all but unanimous resolution of the assembly itself, and thus not only defeat the deliberations of that assembly but bring to nought the policy of the King and of the Senate. Therefore the good negotiator in such a country will know where to find the balance of domestic power in order to profit by it when occasion offers.'
And again under the heading of 'Action appropriate to Democratic States,' he says:—
'He must pay the prince assiduous attention, and thus acquire a sufficient familiarity with him to be able to see and speak to him frequently without ceremony, so that he may be always in a position to know what is going on, and to insinuate into the prince's mind what is favourable to his master's design. If he lives in a democratic state he must attend the Diet and other popular assemblies. He must keep open house and a well-garnished table to attract the deputies, and thus, both by his honesty and by his presence, gain the ear of the ablest and most authoritative politicians, who may be able to defeat a hostile design or support a favourable one. If people of this kind have a freedom of entrée to the ambassador, a good table will greatly assist in the discovery of all that is going on, and the expense laid out upon it is not merely honourable but extraordinarily useful if only the negotiator himself knows how to profit from it.'
And a few lines lower down he makes the explicit statement that
'A negotiator who knows his business will not neglect even the ]east of such opportunities, and he will perform his function in such a manner as to show that his master is truly interested in all that passes at the foreign court.'
My second witness against Sir Arthur Hardinge's opinion is one of the shrewdest of contemporary diplomatists, namely the late German Foreign Secretary, Herr von Kühlmann, whose habitual practice while he was Councillor of Embassy in London shows that it is possible for a diplomatist to have a real and close touch with democratic movements in the modern world, and indeed to make adroit use of them for his own purpose. But if these witnesses are accepted, obviously the junior diplomatists must be released from what is really secretarial work of an unimportant kind. An attaché whose business, as at present, is to copy reports on the salt trade of Sicily or the export of Kavalla tobacco is obviously not in a position either to acquire a knowledge of foreign political conditions, or to gauge the value of political information before transmitting it to his superiors. He should be set free from his present occupations and encouraged to keep open every possible channel of information. Lord Rosebery's instruction to diplomatists abroad to keep a diary of gossip and events as part of their official duty was a pertinent order, and ought to find a place in the permanent instructions to diplomatists; and the serious study of foreign political phenomena should be encouraged by fitting rewards granted to those who have furnished reports upon them. Indeed, it would be a useful feature in Foreign Office work if not only a pecuniary reward but a prospect of early promotion were held out as a recompense for well-written monographs on important subjects. Apart from special studies of that kind, and perhaps before a young diplomatist is allowed to embark upon them, his work for the first year or two should be more largely political in character than it now is.
Apologists of the present system will retort that it is the business of the junior diplomatist to carry out the orders of his superiors, and not to pry into great affairs which he may not understand. The reply is that juniors become superiors in the course of time, and have a right to that political training which alone can equip them for responsibility. They can plead with force that even intelligent obedience to orders from above is impossible without the equipment acquired by a more political apprenticeship. And this argument is presented in the hope that the orders given in future may be inspired by the ideas which it expresses. Readers of this little book—which Sir Ernest Satow recently called 'a mine of political wisdom'—will quickly realise how much this introductory review of modern diplomacy owes to the suggestive maxims of François de Callières. And if they receive as much stimulus and pleasure from the following pages as the translator has enjoyed in preparing them, Louis Fourteenth's plenipotentiary should gain a host of new friends.
A. F. WHYTE.