Page:EB1922 - Volume 30.djvu/890

Rh of the upper air, and in 1907 designed a meteorograph for use with balloons. He also produced, in conjunction with Dr. Napier Shaw, the microbarograph and a recording mercury barometer, as well as various other instruments. From 1901 to 1902 he was president of the Royal Meteorological Society and in 1905 was elected a fellow of the Royal Society. He was a member of the International Commission for Scientific Aeronautics, and be- came an hon. or corresponding member of various foreign scien- tific societies. He is the author of many important papers on the meteorology of the upper atmosphere which appeared in the Transactions of the Royal Society, the Geophysical Memoirs of the Meteorological Office and elsewhere. DIPLOMACY (see ). The general effect of the World War on the principles and practice of diplomacy, defined as the science and art of conducting negotiations between sovereign states, has been very great, for better or for worse; but in general it may be said that the war did not give the initial impulse to, but merely greatly strengthened, forces which had been long at work modifying the traditions of diplomacy and adapting it to new social and political conditions.

Long before the war the gradual development of a sense of the community of interests among civilized nations, and of the public law which was the outcome of this sense, had raised diplomacy to a far higher plane than that which it had occupied in the 18th century. Before the war, too, the progress of democracy had produced great changes in diplomatic practice. Delicate negotiations were, indeed, still conducted in secret, as they always must be; but publicity had already become a recognized diplomatic weapon to be used on occasion, and ambassadors, though still accredited to courts and governments, were sometimes notably in the case of the United States and Great Britain selected for qualities likely to appeal to peoples. Already, too, democratic sentiment was demanding open diplomacy, with popular control, while a host of publicists had long been busy devising schemes for an international order which, were it possible to realize it, would revolutionize diplomacy by establishing among the nations to use President Wilson's language " not a balance of power, but a community of power; not organized rivalries, but an organized common peace."

General Effects of the War on Diplomatic Practice.—These tendencies received a fresh impetus from the outbreak of the war. This disaster was widely ascribed to the machinations of diplo- matists, who were denounced as representing not peoples but a class, as in league with capitalists and munition manufacturers to stir up war, as fraudulent trustees of the nations' welfare, who in their pitiful game of international chicanery habitually used language " false-friendly, circumlocutory, and non-commit- tal, full of duplicity and secret reserves " (e.g. J. A. Hobson, Towards International Government, pp. 67, 69). The cure for this was to be to sweep away the diplomatic tradition altogether; to replace the trained diplomatic service by men directly repre- senting popular opinion; and to secure effective “democratic control” by giving the deciding voice in all international ques- tions to legislative bodies. These remedies for an assumed evil had the support of many sociologists and of many democratic politicians, especially in countries where parliamentary action on treaties was already required. Extend the system of democratic control, they argued, and crown the international edifice with a legislative assembly representing collective humanity, and peace will be forever assured, since the “peoples” never want war. This solution of the international problem, which ignored the fundamental difficulties, seemed to receive support in the highest quarters when President Wilson put forward his “programme of the world's peace.” The very first of the Fourteen Points condemned " secret diplomacy." In future there were to be " open covenants openly arrived at, after which there shall be no private international understandings of any kind, but diplomacy shall proceed always frankly and in the pubh'c view." A “general association of the nations” was to be formed, in place of the partial alliance's of former times (Point XIV.), and peace was to be made secure " by the organized major force of mankind."

The incorporation of the Covenant of the League of Nations in the Peace Treaty was an effort to realize the President's ideal. From the point of view of the present article its main interest lies in the fact that it set up permanent machinery for that “diplomacy by conference” to which the work of settlement after the war gave a powerful development. For the rest, it cannot be said that the history of diplomacy from the time of the Armistice onward revealed any striking change in the old methods. Indeed, in so far as the traditional methods were departed from, the change was sometimes for the worse. The sounding phrases which had heralded the Peace Conference had only as President Wilson himself confessed raised in the hearts of millions of people hopes which could not be realized ; and the enforced departure of the victorious powers from the promises and professions which they had made in their time of trouble did not inspire admiration for the new diplomatic morality. Nor was the assertion of this morality in the great Treaty a luppy one. The preambles of treaties of peace in earlier times had perhaps been tinged with hypocrisy, since it was customary to describe the peace to be concluded as " Christian, universal and perpetual " which nobody believed to be the truth. But even this pretence had its use, since it at least placed on record an ideal. In addition to this, however, it was usual to state that there was to be " complete oblivion of the past," a treaty of peace being conceived as a settlement of all outstanding differ- ences and as clearing the ground for an entirely fresh start in the relations of the contracting parties (Satow, ii., p. 180). Whatever may be said of the guilt of the German nation in respect of the origin and conduct of the war, as justifying a departure from this tradition, the fact that in the Treaty of Versailles it was de- parted from is momentous. For the first time a treaty of peace was made to contain a confession of guilt on the part of the vanquished party, a confession permanently humiliating to a whole people. The old diplomacy, which was wholly practical, would not have made the mistake of introducing into what was intended as the foundation of the permanent order of the world a full charge of political dynamite of this description. The Allied statesmen of a hundred years ago did not thus humiliate France, even after the fresh outburst of the Hundred Days, though they were equally persuaded of her guilt and public opinion clamoured for her humih'ation and dismemberment. But they were trained diplomatists, able to look into a future in which France, regenerated if not repentant, would again become a useful member of the European body politic. They cared not a rap for public opinion.

In general it may be said that the Peace Treaty of 1919 was the work of politicians, not of diplomatists; and this fact marks a significant change in the practice of diplomacy. Before the war the conduct of international affairs was, in Europe at least, in the hands of the trained diplomatic body working in connexion with the various Foreign Offices; and this international business was conducted according to an elaborate code of rules, established by custom or by convention, which had been devised as the result of long experience, to ensure its smooth working At the Conference of Paris diplomatists were present, but they played but a secondary part. This was perhaps inevitable in view of the passionate interest of the peoples in certain aspects of the settlement, which forced those responsible for it to combine the functions of diplomatist and demagogue. But it had an unfortunate repercussion on the professional diplomatic service, of which it lowered the prestige.

This was especially the case, perhaps, in Great Britain. Even before the war there had been a tendency to pass over the professional diplomatists in making appointments to important embassies, which were occasionally, though as yet exceptionally, given to eminent party politicians. It is the system which has always prevailed in the United States, sometimes with excellent results as in the notable succession of ambassadors to the Court