Page:Paul Samuel Reinsch - Secret Diplomacy, How Far Can It Be Eliminated? - 1922.djvu/43



and so cleverly guarded that they are not discovered.

However, at all times there must have existed, among the people at large and even among those playing the game of politics, men who had a natural inborn desire for truth and a simplicity of nature which brought them closer to the true underlying forces than were the common run of courtiers and politicians. The ever recurring admiration expressed for the diplomacy of Cardinal d'Orsat, the envoy of Henry IV to the Pope, indicates a real appreciation, even among the profession, of high standards of straightforwardness in diplomatic negotiations. Cardinal d'Orsat seems to have disdained all shallow devices of deceptive cleverness. He relied upon simple reasonableness and honesty in proposing an arrangement mutually beneficial, to win after others had exhausted all possible tricks and stratagems. In discussing diplomacy, Mably says that such methods alone are calculated to secure positive and permanent results while the devices of clever deceit can only serve to delay and confuse.

Several statesmen have discovered that the telling of the actual truth often exerts a somewhat befuddling effect on diplomats, so that they may easily be misled by telling them real facts