Page:Paul Samuel Reinsch - Secret Diplomacy, How Far Can It Be Eliminated? - 1922.djvu/40



venial, and which is "an untrue discourse to persons who have no right to insist on knowing the truth in a particular case." This distinction gives a rather ample latitude to the discretion of a diplomat in the matter of truthfulness. According to the good and learned Vattel, the duty of any one to tell the truth was binding only towards another who had the right to demand that the truth be spoken. In his day, very few people indeed could claim the right of demanding an insight into diplomatic affairs, so that his rule did not put the diplomat under a very severe moral constraint. Even to the present day there have been known individual envoys whose utterances plainly are made in the spirit of Vattel 's distinction.

Callieres, who wrote on the Practice of Diplomacy, in the year 1716, is full of admiration of all that a shrewd, clever diplomat may accomplish in stirring up trouble and confounding things generally in the state to which he is accredited. To the question, "What can be achieved by a negotiator?" Callieres answers, "We see daily around us its definite effects sudden revolutions favorable to a great design of state, use of sedition and fermenting hatreds, causing jealous rivals to arm, so that the third party may rejoi