Page:The Practice of Diplomacy - Callières - Whyte - 1919.djvu/13

Rh practised by the négotiateur—a most apt name for the diplomatist—in carrying out the instructions of statesmen and princes. The very choice of the word manière in his title shows that he conceives of diplomacy as the servant, not the author, of policy; and indeed his argument is not many pages old before he is heard insisting that it is 'the agent of high policy.' Observance of this distinction is the first condition of fruitful criticism. It is therefore worth while, at the outset, to clear away the obscurity and confusion which surround the subject, and thus, in some measure, to relieve both diplomacy in general and the individual diplomatist in particular from the burden of irrelevant and unjust criticism.

'Secret diplomacy' has played so large a part in recent public discussion that the confusion between foreign policy and diplomacy proper has only been worse confounded. And even where the critics of diplomacy have restricted the range of their attack to the question of the efficiency of our representation abroad, the nature of their criticism leaves it to be supposed that diplomacy is the dazzling and perilous craft which figures in the pages of Mr. Le Queux. The picture of brilliant youths and vii