Page:Diplomacy and the Study of International Relations (1919).djvu/51

 foreign Courts and capitals, were by conditions constrained to be more politic, procrastinating, prevaricating than in our own day. There was an ample supply of 'instructions'— general and specific, initial and supplementary, royal and ministerial; and these two last were at times, and in a notable instance, irreconcilable. But time and space were then so far from having been overcome that ambassadors had, in many emergencies, to act at their own discretion, to temporize, and make false or merely conditional promises: they had to wait until explicit orders came to them from their Government or their royal master, or from both, thus making explanations necessary, and, it might be, a fresh line of action, a new plan of campaign. We have an impressive illustration in the history