Page:The Practice of Diplomacy - Callières - Whyte - 1919.djvu/164

 too readily forget a man like himself who never wrote anything but the unpalatable truth.

Thereupon Don Estevan de Gamarre, in his surprise at this picture of the Court of Spain drawn for him by his relative, replied: 'Apparently fortune in Madrid favours the deceiver and the favour of the Court may be won by mendacity. I have no longer any qualms about my future.' He then returned to the Low Countries, where he profited so easily by the advice of his relative, that, to employ a Spanish term, he won several mercedes, and he saw his own affairs prosper in the measure in which he succeeded in inventing reasons why the affairs of the enemy must come to nought. From this one may conclude that the Court of Spain wished to be deceived, and gave its ambassadors a free rein to make their own fortunes at the expense of the true interests of the monarchy. There is a moral here both for ministers at home and for ambassadors abroad, on which I need not insist. ‘The truth requires two agents, one to tell and another to hear.

Between sovereign states there are many kinds of treaty, the principal of which are treaties of peace, armistices, commercial treaties, and those which regulate alliances or guarantee neutrality. There are both public and secret treaties. There are even contingent treaties, so called because their success