Page:Paul Samuel Reinsch - Secret Diplomacy, How Far Can It Be Eliminated? - 1922.djvu/176

 between the two States suddenly attain a magnitude they ought never to be allowed to approach, that the newspapers of the two countries agitate themselves, that the Parlia- ments of the two countries have their passions set on fire, and great crises arise, which may end, have ended sometimes, in international catastrophes. . . . Office of- ficials, or officials of any Department, to expend some of their energy in getting ready for cross-examination, you will really be destroying the public service. There is nothing on which I feel more strongly than that. They are not accustomed to it, and they ought not to be accustomed to it. ... I do not hold the view that antique methods are pursued by diplomatists which no man of common sense adopts in the ordinary work of everyday life. On the contrary, the work of diplomacy is exactly the work which is done every day between two great firms, for instance, which have business relations, or between two great corporate entities which have in- terests diverging or interests in common. If you are a man of sense you do not create difficulties to begin with. You try to get over all these things without the embit- terment which advertisement always brings with it. It is when you begin to press your case in public that an- tagonism arises. In private in conversation which need not go beyond the walls of the room in which you are, you can put your case as strongly as you like, and the gentleman with whom you are carrying on the discus- sion may put his case as strongly as he likes, and if good manners are observed and nothing but fair discussion takes place no soreness remains and no one is driven to ignore the strong points of his opponent's case. Di- rectly a controversy becomes public all that fair give- and-take becomes either difficult or impossible. . . . But if all you mean ... is that it is wrong for the nations