goat of a valuable public servant has recoiled on the politicians guilty of this peculiarly mean and usually successful manœuvre. In reply to a question Lord Robert Cecil said (House of Commons, March 22, 1917):

Yes, sir, an extremely able Memorandum was drawn up by Sir Eyre Crowe and submitted to the Secretary of State on January 1, 1907, dealing with German policy and the grave dangers with which it threatened this country. But I do not think it would be in the public interest to make a precedent for the publication of secret departmental memoranda by laying it on the Table I say this with reluctance, because the publication of this very striking State Paper would set at rest for ever the baseless insinuations which have been made against the patriotism and character of one of the ablest of our public servants.

We may be sure that this internal evidence of approaching danger did not stand alone, as there were other despised officials at the Foreign Office who could have told Ministers everything they ought to know about Germany had they cared to listen. A writer in the Quarterly Review has mentioned a Memorandum, written in the same year as Mr. Asquith's public assurances, by Lord Hardinge prior to his departure for India. This document which I need hardly say I have not seen-is said to have called attention to the completion of the Kiel Canal in 1913, as also to the German strategic railway system on the Belgian frontier which would be finished at the same time, the Government being advised by their chief expert that 1913 should consequently be regarded as the beginning of the danger period. It will be agreed that this remarkable essay in foresight reflects as much credit on its author as discredit on those who turned a deaf ear to Lord Hardinge, preferring the fatuities of Lord Haldane.

In the face of such experiences, which could be multiplied a hundredfold, Mr. Balfour will probably pardon most of us who regard the present form of Secret Diplomacy with considerable distrust, as it seems to be nothing more than an elaborate mystification of the people by statesmen who carry ignorance to the verge of folly, or inaccuracy to the verge of falsehood. Nor are we cheered up when Mr. Balfour, who proclaims that his confidence in this system is unshaken, gives us this glimpse of its modus operandi:

That [peace-keeping] is his whole business, and that business is far better done in most cases, though not necessarily in all, not by proclaiming our policy at Charing Cross, but by confidential conversations with those who can convey views to other Governments and in that way smooth over difficulties [our italics], great or small, which if ignored or repeated in a wrong way may become festering sores of a most dangerous character to the general harmony and health of international relationship. If it is impossible in peace-time, how much more is it impossible in war-time to be always explaining everything to everybody.

No serious person has ever been heard to suggest that the Foreign Minister should be perpetually talking. It is the last

thing that is required or that would be tolerated. All we do ask is that statesmen who profess to be democrats and to be amenable to public opinion should give the country a chance of appreciating the general lines of the national policy and of realizing the obligations they have undertaken and the risks such may involve. Also, that it shall cease to be a point of honour with His Majesty's Ministers to mislead Parliament on elementary matters of fact, as has been too frequently the practice in every discussion upon foreign affairs. But of course if they imagine that their only business is "smoothing over difficulties" their conduct becomes intelligible.

For Secret Diplomacy conducted by masters of their craft who have made a lifelong study of the subjects with which they deal there is much to be said, and we might be well content to await the fruits of their efforts without asking interlocutory questions. But the diplomacy from which we have suffered and continue to suffer has every disadvantage, because though the routine may be left in the hands of Ambassadors and their staffs or permanent officials, who between them know a good deal of the business in hand, it is completely controlled by Cabinet Ministers who have had no diplomatic training whatsoever and are as a general rule as ignorant of the countries and Governments with which they are negotiating as they are innocent of the issues involved. It is a miracle when catastrophe is avoided. Mr. Balfour talks as though "the critic in the chair" were denouncing the handiwork of diplomats of the calibre of Lord Stratford de Redcliffe, Sir Robert Morier, Sir William White, and other eponymous heroes, who were fully equipped for their task, and when properly supported by the Home Government could invariably give a good account of themselves against any combination, but the weakness then, as to-day, lay in Downing Street. It was, if I remember aright, Sir Robert Morier who, after much painful experience, warned Sir William White that in the event of his relying on the British Government of the day he would find himself in the position of "a Philistine carrying a blunderbuss loaded with cow-dung."

In our time it is infinitely worse. The professional diplomatist is completely under the thumb of the amateur politician, from whom he generally has the utmost difficulty in getting a hearing, as in the rare cases when the latter will listen to any one he not unnaturally prefers the more palatable advice of some other political amateur who thinks as he does and talks his jargon. Lord Lansdowne, it is true, practised Secret Diplomacy with considerable success. His two conspicuous achievements were carefully guarded secrets confined to official circles until the egg was actually laid, and so far as we know amateurs were

warned off the course. In both cases Lord Lansdowne was not too proud to be guided by his skilled advisers, who were a material factor in the two historic events to which Lord Lansdowne owes his fame. The first of these was the Anglo-Japanese Treaty of Alliance of January 1902, which closed the period of our "splendid" but perilous isolation. It was one of the best kept secrets of our generation, being unsuspected outside the few immediately concerned until the accomplished fact was handed to the Press one fateful midnight. It was the admiration of every Chancery and raised British prestige throughout the world. Lord Lansdowne had a subsequent relapse into amateur diplomacy when, contrary to the best advice, he entangled himself in that deplorable "Venezuela mess in the autumn of 1902 at the bidding of Berlin, involving us in a gratuitous quarrel with the United States which could only have been of advantage to Germany. Nothing daunted, he made a second gaffe of a no less alarming character when he landed his colleagues, during Mr. Chamberlain's absence in South Africa, in that most humiliating agreement with Germany concerning the Bagdad_Railway, described elsewhere in this number by Mr. Lovat Fraser, who throws fresh light on many dark places. From this the Balfour Government were only rescued by a spontaneous ebullition of public opinion of sufficient power to carry them into the Anglo-French camp. The negotiation of the Entente Cordiale with France began in 1903, before the dust raised by the Bagdad bungle had been laid. Here once more professional diplomacy was enlisted with the happiest results, and in April 1904 M. Delcassé and Lord Lansdowne attached their signatures to a compact which had been so skilfully negotiated that the much interested, ever curious, and highly suspicious German Emperor was convinced, although he had been assured to the contrary, that there was nothing afoot. Lord Lansdowne will always be remembered in this connexion, which was one of the greatest triumphs of the personnel of the Foreign Office and the other diplomats immediately concerned, always remembering Lord Cromer, who threw himself into the work with great enthusiasm. Lord Lansdowne's successor, Sir Edward Grey, steered a steady course during several critical years during which his chief function consisted in preventing obstreperous colleagues with strong proGerman, or rather anti-British, proclivities from kicking over the traces and completely destroying our foreign policy as they were destroying our armaments. Eventually, after 1911, Sir Edward felt himself unable to hold out against the Potsdam Party, who openly raised the cry, on the suggestion of Berlin, "G.M.G.' (Grey Must Go). He wearied of well-doing, and we entered upon the most dismal chapter of Secret Diplomacy in modern English

history, of which Lord Haldane appeared at the time to have been allowed to take charge, though to-day he insists that things were contrary to what they seemed and that his labours consisted of one prolonged warning to his colleagues against the German danger, and not, as is universally thought, one prolonged attempt to minimize it to his countrymen. In any event, after 1911, which marked the culminating-point of Sir Edward Grey's diplomacy-which had consisted in loyally consolidating the Entente with France and Russia as the one and only solid bulwark of European peace-Lord Haldane became de facto Foreign Minister, and the Haldane spirit, whatever it was, dominated the diplomatic debacle which ran its course between the spacious days of Agadir and the black week which preceded Armageddon.

II. THE DOCTOR

THE tragic chapter of British diplomacy preceding the Great War opened with the worst specimen of Secret Diplomacy from which any democracy ever suffered. It was conceived in the dark, born in the dark, grew in the dark, with dire consequences to our country, all of which might have been spared had there been a reasonable amount of candour and a modicum of truth. Besides being secret this episode reeked of the amateur. No expert had any say in it, indeed all the British experts were known to be dead against it just as all the German experts were enthusiastic in its favour because it promised a breach in the Entente, which had been so laboriously built up during nine fateful years. I refer, needless to say, to Lord Haldane's fatal mission to Berlin in February 1912, which was undoubtedly one of the contributory causes of the present war, as on the one hand our unsuspecting countrymen were told that our only diplomatist" had dissipated all the distrust that had so long clouded Anglo-German relations and had opened a new era in European history, and that only simpletons like Lord Roberts thought otherwise. Meanwhile Germany gathered from the mere fact of our Government being willing to apologize for its relatively robust attitude over Agadir the previous year by sending a pronounced friend of Germany" to Berlin that we repented our support of France and should not repeat the offence. The policy of the Potsdam Party in the Cabinet, which had now at last got the upper hand (which it retained until August 2, 1914), had been boldly proclaimed on the eve of the Haldane visit to Berlin in Sir Edward Grey's dismissal from office by the Daily News, whose views were shared by all that was most " progressive in the Progressive Party :

The key to Sir Edward Grey's policy is the fatal antagonism to Germany. There and there alone is the root of our humiliation and our impotence. The time has now come to state, with a clearness which cannot be mistaken, that Sir Edward Grey as Foreign Secretary is impossible. (Daily News, January 10, 1912.)

We had literally saved the peace of Europe by standing firm by the side of France in 1911, when the German Panther had been sent to Agadir to "test" the Entente. Now was the time to remain firm. France had just dismissed her Prime Minister, M. Caillaux, on finding that he had conducted a diplomacy that