THE VICE OF SECRET DIPLOMACY

...The Minister for Foreign Affairs makes the suggestion to the Ambassador, who undertakes to communicate with his Government, because that is the extent of his authority...

...The professional diplomatic service of Europe is a trade union, very jealous of its membership, but similar to other trade unions, while the members quarrel and intrigue against each other, they are always ready to forget their differences when in danger from outside attack...

...Must Heal Troubles IN THE speech I have quoted, Mr...

...Is it any wonder that diplomats, now that we are getting some insight into their confidential correspondence, should have so woefully misled their Governments or proved how little they really understood the people to whom they were accredited ? Yet so implacable is the diplomatic tradition so firmly convinced in every Foreign Office in its own inerrancy, that the same Foreign Minister who will not trust his Ambassador to sign a petty treaty without the closest scrutiny, simply because custom does -not ordain it, will unhesitatingly accept the information conveyed to him by the same Ambassador which may influence a policy leading to war...

...Sought to Secure Advantage EVERY nation in turn has sought to secure advantage by means of a secret alliance, and every treaty of alliance solemnly entered into, declaring on the faith of kings that it would be loyally observed invoking the name of the Most High or the Trinity, in the stilted language of diplomacy as witness to the sincerity of the high contracting parties, has been merely a scrap of paper, made for the advantage of the moment and broken without a qualm of conscience when a greater advantage was to be obtained...

...The secret family compact of the Bourbons, France and Spain, in 1733, was one of the causes of the French and English war in America...

...An agreement having been reached the treaty is written on parchment in both languages in parallel columns, and even in an Anglo-American treaty the same form is observed, because of the difference in spelling certain words in England and America...

...It had to be conducted with much mystery and always great secrecy...

...It is necessary, hie adds, to dispel the false notion the man in t;he street has of diplomacy...

...In modern times, no Ambassador has latitude of action or is given a free hand, and every move he makes must be immediately reported to the Foreign Office...

...Sovereigns were too well versed in the dishonesty of kings to put faith in the royal promise, and while treaties might be kept secret from their subjects they became known to the governments against whom they were directed, who on their part took out a policy of reinsurance against the treachery of a nominal ally by making a counter alliance...

...I think there is in the public mind a profound illusion as to this so-called secret diplomacy," ne told the House of Commons...

...Yet while the world has seen nothing so disastrous as secret diplomacy, it has seen nothing so foolish, more befitting the idle moments of schoolboys, than the serious work of statesmen to whom the world ascribes genius...

...He was born in London, England, in 1860 and was educated in Kings' College in London, For a time he was a chief American correspondent of the London Morning Post but since 1896 has been a writer on American affairs for the London National Review...

...That treaty will, it can safely be assumed, contain many radical and startling articles as befitting the climax to the titanic struggle, and may not America again serve the world by ridding it of secret diplomacy...

...Governments, he said, could do more conduct their affairs in the open than individuals reveal their domestic difficulties, so the business of diplomacy had to be conducted in secret, and the less light thit was let in on "the mysterious intricacies of foreign diplomacy," the better it was for the peace of mind of all concerned...

...diplomats are histoory's attorneys," is his epigrammatic description...

...He has no power to agree to anything, not even by inference...

...Balfour said the business of a diplomat "is entirely directed not to making quarrels, but to healing quarrels...

...He adds "There are many persons who would rely on the secrecy of the President, but who would not confide in that of the Senate," therefore, "the convention, has done well" in so arranging that although the President must act by the advice and consent of the Senate, "yet he will be able to manage the business of intelligence in such a manner as prudence may suggest...

...No sane man proposes that the day to day conversation between the Minister and an Ambassador shall be revealed, but between that reticence and the unlimited power to commit the nation to a policy that involves thousand* of lives and millions of treasure is quite another thing...

...It has never protected, it has never prevented war, it has never curbed the ambition of a conscienceless ruler, but it has provoked other and more dangerous combinations, and the allies, confident of their strength, have treacherously forced war or struck at the security of nations at peace...

...NO greater contribution to political morality and national security has ever been made than that of the framers of the Constitution of the United States when they wrote the Sixth Article in these words: "This Constitution, and the laws of the United States which shall be made in pursuance thereof...

...Between the assassination of the Archduke Francis Ferdimand and the Austrian ultimatum to Serbia twenty-five days elapsed...

...The diplomacy developed Iby the war, and the diplomats who have madle reputations, are those of the United States, 'which an Englishman may say without being aiccused of undue partiality...

...In those twenty-five diays the world's fate was being decided, yet mot a single Entente Ambassador nor a singlle Minister for Foreign Affairs had the slightest knowledge of what was going on, and so little was the gravity of the crisis appreciated tmat at the time of the delivery of the ultimatum some of the Ambassadors of the Greatt Powers were away from their posts on hodiday...

...What understanding existed between England and France...

...It is a timely contribution.—Editor's note...

...and Mr...

...but when a member of the House of Commons suggested that if the House had been taken into the confidence of the Government, the war would not have burst upon the country as an unexpected thunderbolt, Mr...

...If the other side is willing to accept the changes the Ambassador must notify the Foreign Office...

...Even when the people began to exert their power to assert their right to some control over their own affairs, to raise taxes and to determine how they should be spent, the king was still the solo authority in foreign relations...

...It is responsible for the endless intrigue and cabal so dear to the Minister without conscience or willing to barter his honor for gain...

...The interests of a nation may be put in jeopardy, but the feelings of a diplomat must never be hurt...

...As a treaty was placed on the same footing as the law and had the same force and effect as a law, like the law it must be made public for its terms to be respected...

...How far was Germany prepared to go in the support of Austria in reducing Serbia to terms t Again that question remained unanswered, because while the two Emperors knew their subjects did not...

...for have we not seen the Autocrat of Prussia and the Autocrat of all the Russiaa writing to each other in the language of schoolboys and secretly intriguing against the peace of their neighbors ? Bismarck, the most cynical but also the most astute man of his times, defended his immorality by asserting that when he entered into a secret agreement intended to nullify a public convention he was simply taking out a policy of reinsurance...

...This close supervision, a supervision that would suggest the Foreign Minister has no confidence in his Ambassador, and dare not accord him the discretion the ordinary man gives his agent, is met by the paradox of the almost unlimited importance attached to the opinions, impressions and deductions of the Ambassador...

...A member suggested that the creation of a Parliamentary Foreign Relations Committee, to have practically the same functions as those of the Foreign Relations Committee of the Senate, would be an improvement...

...We have seen within the last few years the evils of secret diplomacy, that is the power of sovereigns to enter into agreements without the knowledge or acquiescence of their subjects...

...The people knew nothing until they were plunged into war because in the exercise of his royal prerogative their sovereign had made a secret alliance and the nation was committed to a costly campaign involving great sacrifices...

...It would appeal to the democracies of England, France, Italy and Russia, and it would be championed by the enlightened republics of South America, whose constitutions have been so closely modelled on that of the United States...

...He still remains that fictional character the personal representative of royalty, actually he is the agent of the Foreign Office, which keeps a very tight rein on him...

...No one, I think, will question the fairness of these observations...

...The Vice of Secret Diplomacy Institution of the United States Struck a Blow at Diplomatic Intrigue—Other Nations May Well Follow This Sound Public Policy By A. MAURICE LOW, (from North American Review) The author of the following article is one of the best known journalists of today...

...In the discussion of secret diplomacy a confusion exists between negotiation and consummation...

...Unfortunately," he points out, "it does not seem that fortune has endowed any of oiur Allied countries, either before or since the war, with a head capable of leading, on grand liines, the diplomatic affairs of the Entente...

...gotiation, which is all essential...

...Similar to the Bourbons who learned nothing and forgot nothing, the necromancers who practised the black art of secret diplomacy forgot everything and profited nothing by experience, otherwise how can one explain that king succeeded king, and minister followed minister, and yet this wretched farce went on, not for a period, not for years, but for centuries, and the tradition has been handed down to our own times...

...Three or four hundred years ago the Ambassador really was the personal representative of his sovereign, in Sir Henry Wotton's classical phrase he was "an honest man sent abroad to lie for the good of hia country...

...The secretaries of the Embassies divide their time between office work, copying documents in cropper plate hand, or social functions, pleasant enough but confined to a particular and narrow set...

...It was a cynic who described a doctor as saying to a patient, "I haven't as yet made the diagnosis, but do not alarm yourself needlessly, for we will be able to discover everything at the autopsy...

...and it is about as sensible as it would be were our khaki clad girls to drive an ambulance in the crinolines of their Victorian grandmothers...

...While the Congress was sitting England, France and Austria entered into a secret treaty directed against Russia and Prussia, their putative allies...

...That has been one of the evils of the vice of secret diplomacy...

...Few of the secretaries know the language of the country in which they reside, ffewer still travel in the interior of the land im order to study it...

...In explanation of the power given to the President to negotiate treaties, but not to conclude them, Jay wrote: "It seldom happens in the negotiation of treaties, of whatever nature, but that perfect secrecy and immediate dispatch are sometimes requisite...

...European diplomacy is a survival for which there is little justification at the present time...

...The secret was so little a secret that the Czar knew of it immediately after the treaty was signed...

...The framers of the Constitution determined this should be impossible in America...

...not to provoking war but to stopping war...

...and it was an Empress of Russia who advised Frederick of Prussia to replace his elderly Ambassador with a young and handsome man having a good complexion...

...Diplomacy was the royal prerogative...

...It resists innovation and it stands triumphant as the one perfect institution devised by the perverted ingenuity of man...

...Thie latter therefore has been only served by those diplomats who are mere officials, and who ias such await instructions from higher quarters, and these instructions »re very often foumd wanting...

...In London, Paris, Rome, and elsewheire Excellencies, with high sounding titles and numerous decorations, sat, in Crabbe's phrase, "dexterouslv writing, dispatches, and havinpg the honor to be," but knowing nothing...

...A law to be observed must be made public, for no man can know what the law is unless it has been published...

...Balfour, the Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs, found it necessary to attempt to stem the growing demand for the democratization of European diplomacy...

...Napoleon III, walking in the footsteps of his illustrious uncle, secretly proposed to Bismarck that France should be given Belgium and Luxemburg as the price of his friendship to the new German Confederation...

...Imagine "the amiable Mr...

...Later when both were rivals they sought the support of the King of England, and both bribed his chancellor, Cardinal Wolsey...

...It would not bring Utopia, but it would make diplomacy honest, straightforward, clean...

...If the political or commercial , interests of the United States require to obtain a strip of territory to construct a canal, or a group of islands having strategic value, it would be unwise in the extreme for the United States publicly to proclaim what it was after...

...What was the arrangement exist* ing between Germany and Austria in the doa-ing days of July 1914...

...Instead of the secret treaty being a policy of reinsurance, that is a measure of protection, it was, on the contrary, always a measure of danger...

...It is an attempt to link the stage coach with the telephone, an unworkable combination...

...The people, the victims of the system, who had to pay for it, were always in a state of fear, "never knowing when they were next to be dragged into the army and forced to fight for a shadowy cause about which they were ignorant and cared nothing...

...not to creating difficulty but to preventing difficulty...

...This war has torn away a lot of the furnished trappings of conventional civilizatioin, but nothing stands so thoroughly discredited as professional diplomacy, "folly in a cioat that looks like sagacity...

...No one knew, for that was a secret between the two Emperors...

...Secret negotiation is not only proper, but, in many cases, absolutely essential...

...The present system worked well enough, and "to reveal from day to day what is ultimately revealed with all due precaution in the Blue Book would really be insanity...

...The United States is the one great nation that has written into its Constitution the equality of laws and treaties, but the example set by the United States, its morality and advantages, is beginning to make the peoples of other countries ask whether it would not be wiser for them to have a share in the making of treaties instead of surrendering their authority to a few persons...

...That treaty was made public, but the terms of a secret agreement made at-the same time were kept secret...

...It would require too much space merely to catalogue the long list of secret alliances and their consequences, but a few taken at random may be offered to show they never exercised the slightest restraint upon their signatories, and they were shamelessly broken almost as soon as they were concluded...

...Look to Future SOME TIME, one hopes that time may be near but dreads to think it may be far, but some time the greatest war mankind has known must be brought to a close by the signatures of the plenipotentiaries to the most momentous treaty of peace in the world's history...

...United States Leader THIS IS an arrangement as nearly per-feet as human intelligence can devise...

...If it were not for the coroner fewer medical mistakes would go unrecognized, and the diplomat, shrouded from public gaze, can blunder until war or history, usually written long after the event, reveals his ineptitude, and then it is too late for the damage to be repaired...

...Diplomacy with its shoe9 of felt" clings to secrecy because even in an age of progress diplomacy remains faithful to tradition...

...Few Foreign Ministers have more than a superficial acquaintance of foreign countries, most of them know absolutely nothing of their people, their institutions or their politics...

...In 1900 he investigated for the United States department of Labor certain phases of English labor legislation...

...The forehanded Louis had already made a secret treaty with the Emperor of Austria by which they were to divide the Spanish dominions on the death of the then king...

...it is so necessary that if negotiations were not kept secret few treaties could be concluded and the negotiations would always be hampered...

...it would make almost impossible the chicanery, fraud, intrigue that for centuries have deluged Europe in blood and brought misery to its people, and there would be little further opportunity for a Hohenzollern or a Hapsburg, a Ferdinand or a Constantine, to make alliances for war unless with the authority and consent of their subjects.—The North American Review, February...

...The British people did not know, the British Parliament did not know, neither the German Emperor nor the Austrian Emperor knew...

...When he has something to say he says It in plain United States...

...dame, says: The typical professional diplomat Jives in ft world of his own...

...It would be a greater protection against a repetition of the horrors of the last three years than paper disarmaments, theoretical freedom of the sea, leagues of peace, or economic alliances...

...In short, as Paschalius suggested, while an Ambassador should study to speak the truth, he was not debarred from the "official lie," and, on occasion, he should be splendide men-dax...

...aind the portentous words Ballpaltz and Wilhelmstrasse, Quai d'Orsay and Downing Street, which were used as a kind of incantation by the older school of professors of international politics, simply bore him...

...Diplomacy was supposed to be beyond the comprehension of the common mortal...

...If the Minister for Foreign Affairs consents, he gives the Ambassador authority to enter into negotiations, and indicates the lines to be followed...

...He is a regular contributor to the leading English and American Reviews...

...Parliament naturally had to stand behind the Government, what other course was possible?, but it simply ratified an executive act after the act was committed, instead of delegating to the Executive authority to act, as the American Congress does, thanks to the foresight of the Fathers...

...Sir Edward Grey, the then Foreign Secretary, converted a somewhat loose entente, the terms of which even to this day no one knows, into a formal alliance, and then went down to the House of Commons and told what he had done...

...Positiom of America THE AMERICAN Ambassador," a Lon-don newspaper recently remarked, "owns none of that rather absurd diplomatic sentiment which setts the Diplomatic Service in a class apart...

...He fondly thinks thiat diplomats, while preparing clever and mysterious combinations, fashion history, but experience shows that they merely chronicle history and do not make it...

...A Foreign Minister may know of the incompetence of his Ambassador, but the code of professional ethics and loyalty to the trade union stay his dismissal, because that would be a reflection upon the service...

...Still the Ambassador cannot sign until he has received specific authority and has exhibited to the Minister for Foreign Affairs what is technically known as "full powers," but really is the national power of attorney...

...Richelieu was always making and breaking secret agreements...

...The Foreign Minister therefore is compelled to rely on the Ambassador, who, often ignorant of the language of the country, unable to read the ver-nacula press, because of his exalted position debari from mixing freely with the people, and living in a narrow circle whose members are only too frequently misrepresentative of public opinion, is supposed to be able to keep his Foreign Minister correctly informed of the state of affairs, the currents of politics and the national sentiment...

...Then negotiations proceed smoothly and a draft is prepared, which is submitted to the Foreign Office, where it is subjected to rigid scrutiny, passed upon by legal and other experts, perhaps a few changes made in form or phraseology...

...Under Ministry's Thumb BUT WE have changed all that, and the pulchritude of an Ambassador is no longer considered when he is about to be appointed, nor is it necessary that his complexion shall be the envy of a boarding school miss...

...In 1516 Henry VIII of England entered into negotiations with Charles V of Spain directed against Francis I of France, whereupon Charles made a secret treaty with Francis...

...Napoleon detached Russia from the Allied cause and made her an enemy of England by the treaty of Tilsit...

...By insisting that there shall be written in the treaty an article that in every country Treaties shall, like laws, constitute the supreme law of the land, and must be ratified by Parliaments, the immorality of the secret agreement would no longer be possible...

...Secrecy, therefore, in the early stages of| negotiation is perfectly proper and was so recognized by the men who made the Constitution, and they were good judges of how far it was wise to entrust authority...

...He was naturally deep in the confidence of his king, he was compelled to act almost entirely on his own judgment and initiative, because communication was slow and uncertain, and the great game in which sovereigns were engaged could be so easily upset by an Ambassador more adroit, whose wits were more nimble or who was more unscrupulous, who knew the right minister to bribe or the woman to make love to...

...He need not necessarily be old, but he will certainly not be young, for wisdom and not fascination is his recommendation, and yet how terribly unwise so many Ambassadors have proved themselves to be...

...Secrets Get Out IN 1815, after Napoleon had been banished to Elba, the Allies met in Congress at Vienna to readjust the map, France having a voice...

...Bryan, with his deep love of humanity and his horror of war, by virtue of his office as Secretary of State, offering to Germany Key West in consideration of Germany signing an arbitration treaty, convinced that Key West was of little value to the United States but its transfer to Germany would forever render impossible any danger of war between Germany, and the United States, and then when the* treaty was duly sealed, signed and delivered calmly announcing to the country his latest diplomatic triumph I That brilliant Frenchman, Andre" Chera...

...When they wrote into the compact of the States that treaties should have the same force as law3, they deprived a weak, ambitious or unscrupulous President of the power to contract a secret alliance...

...and all Treaties made, or which shall be made, under the authority of the United States, shall be the supreme Law of the land...

...They it was who made war, contracted alliances, bartered territory, sacrificed liberty for a whim or superstitious fear...

...Recently Mr...

...It combines the prime requisites of secrecy in ne...

...Balfour did not agree with him...

...Balfour's admission that sixty day3 before the greatest war the world has known the British Government had no suspicion of what was coming, suggests the happy indifference of the physician, who atones for his lack of diagnostic skill by his ability in making the post mortem, which satisfies the laudable curiosity of the practitioner but does not exactly compensate the patient...

...In 1668 England and the Netherlands made a secret treaty to force Louis XIV of France to make peace with Spain, but he heard the news with indifference...

...in trying situations they have kept their heads and shown the same shrewdness, grasp of affairs and quick comprehension that won them their place in law, commerce and literature...

...The essence of a good bargain—and a treaty, it must always be remembered, is only another name for a bargain —is secrecy and a certain skill in affecting indifference...

...The following article on the Vice of Secret Diplomacy is reprinted from the North American Review...

...to their new posts, have done extraordinarily well...

...There are cases where the most useful intelligence may be obtained, if the persons possessing it can be relieved from the apprehension of discovery...

...It was a blow struck at that mass of intrigue, deceit and dishonesty which for centuries the world had known as secret diplomacy, the most vicious, immoral and dangerous power seized by a ruler in defiance of the rights of his subjects...

...and it was a seventeenth century commentator who advised that no matter what his religion, it was an Ambassador's duty to invent falsehoods and to go about making society believe them...

...if counter proposals are made, even although they are trivial and do not affect the substance, the Ambassador must ask instructions...

...counsel after the negotiations have been concluded, and publicity when the Council of State, the Senate, has assented...

...It was one of the divine attributes of kings...

...Lord Salisbury traded Heligoland for a shadowy German claim in Africa...

...That is the stupendous folly of this diplomacy...

...he has no superstitious awe of Chancelleries...

...The newspaper quoted is the London Morning Post, the leading conservative journal of England, and a supporter and defender of the established order rather than an admirer of experiment When it recognizes the absurdity of the frippery of modern diplomacy, or the sorry figure cut by Excellencies "who have the honor to be," and is impressed by the straightforwardness and directness of the American Ambassador speaking "in plain United States," there is hope that Europe will sweep out a ridiculous institution and the world will be freed from the "seething diplomacies and monstrous mendacities, horribly wicked and despicably unwise," in the language of Carlyle, who never minced his words...

...The phrase was his, but the principle was as old as diplomacy itself and as mistaken...

...This is the routine followed in the most trivial negotiation...

...in a democratic monarchy, as in England, where by a legal fiction the treaty runs in the name of the king, actually it is the Prime Minister and his Cabinet, the real Government of England, that negotiates and concludes...

...Balfour said, "I do not believe that the Government, in June, 1914, had the slightest notion that there was any danger ahead...

...It might get it, but it would be forced to pay an extravagant price, it might even fail because of the opposition of a rival...

...it rarely is reached by direct observation of peopie or facts...

...Gerard, Herrick, Francis, Van Dyke, Brand Whitlock, Maurice ffigan, Penfield, and the two Pages, with no proffessional training and only the most perfuncttory instruction, lawyers, bankers, men of ketters, passing from their customary vocations...

...He wears neither star nor any other decoration...

...tblind themselves blissfully leading the blind, ; and looking forward with certitude to their imvaluable services being rewarded with anotheer Grand Cordon...

...and the history of Europe, from the time that its history first began to assume concrete form and diplomacy was established as a principle, is largely the record of this unrestrained power...

...the sovereign in an autocratic government...

...Charles II of England, who was chronically hard up, secretly sold Dunkirk to France...

...In a period of profound peace, when the most cordial relations exist between two countries, it becomes necessary to adjust a minor shipping or trade matter, which has to be done by treaty...

...Either his information1 comes from the office ox it is second-hand...

...It would do more to keep the world safe for democracy than any other thing...

...In those days youth, looks and a good complexion counted for much, and if in addition the royal representative was rich, a grand seigneur, able to turn a neat phrase, well versed in the classics, careful in his religious observances and yet sufficiently immoral to excite a flutter in the breasts of dowagers and anticipation in the hearts of the reigning beauties, then this Admirable Crich-ton would be a success as an Ambassador and either win for hi6 master an empire or lose him his crown...