Page:The Practice of Diplomacy - Callières - Whyte - 1919.djvu/21

 With the return to normal conditions criticism lapses once more into its former sporadic vein, and public interest wanes.'

The effect of public opinion on the great departments of state may be gauged in a comparison between the Navy and the Diplomatic Service. The latter is almost as vital to our security as the former, and yet the public mind passes it by with nothing more than an occasional curse. Before the war there was a fatal divorce between Defence and Foreign Policy. We insisted on having the ships, but we neglected to study the very European events which might compel us to use them. Absorbed in the preoccupation of urgent domestic problems we left our foreign affairs behind the closed doors of the Foreign Office, and hardly troubled even to inquire into the manner in which the Diplomatic Service discharged its duty. Our negligence should, therefore, give us pause before we endorse some of the sweeping verdicts so often passed against our diplomacy. The Foreign Office and its agents have a heavy account to meet, which is only in part due to the difficulties of co-operation in an alliance. But justice compels us to admit that the magnitude of certain failures is the xv