Page:Paul Samuel Reinsch - Secret Diplomacy, How Far Can It Be Eliminated? - 1922.djvu/63

50 by promising not to take any advantage of the slip.

A Prussian Minister for Foreign Affairs (Manteuffel) had hired a police agent to sneak into the French Embassy in order to secure some documents there. When he delightedly showed one of the letters secured to General Von Gerlach, the latter said: "I could have written you ten such letters for what this cost you."

Disraeli, in a letter to his sister, spoke of the Danish Minister at London as his secret agent in the diplomatic corps.

There were also more innocent means of gaining advantages such as are practised in many other branches of human enterprise. For instance, Labouchere relates his discovery, when attache at Washington, that Secretary Marcy was put in a terrible ill-humor whenever he lost at whist. Upon a hint from Labouchere, the British Minister managed thereafter regularly to lose in his games with Marcy who was immensely pleased at "beating the British at their own game." Labouchere adds: "Every morning when the terms of the treaty were being discussed we had our revenge and scored a few points for Canada."

There was all this time an increasing tendency to discount the importance of the tradition arts