Page:The Practice of Diplomacy - Callières - Whyte - 1919.djvu/24

 is that the Foreign Office is largely manned by officials who know but little of the conditions of diplomatic action in foreign countries, while the Diplomatic Service remains a stranger to its own native country. Sir Robert Morier truly said that 'the Diplomatic Service needs to be nationalised, and the Foreign Office to be internationalised.' The amalgamation of the two Services is the only road to that result, and effective amalgamation means the compulsory interchange of personnel at regular intervals between the office at home and its missions abroad. No reformer can be satisfied with any proposal which falls short of that aim. The Foreign Office bears the same relation to the Diplomatic Service as the Admiralty to the Service afloat; and since compulsory interchange is the very life of the Navy, its good effects may be expected in the analogous case of our Foreign Service.

When these reforms have been adopted they will recreate the Diplomatic Service only in the measure in which their spirit animates the Foreign Secretary and his ambassadors. The Service is like a great tree full of ancient and decaying boughs, which should have been cut away long ago in order to give xviii