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rules, which act, as it were, automatically and leave little room for the display of diplomatic talent. International negotiations are reduced to-day, in American and European capitals, to the solution of mathematical equations from which personal factors are nearly entirely eliminated, and in which hard facts and figures provided by statistics are opposed to one another by men responsible to public opinion, so that the possibility of one party's gaining a marked advantage over the other is very small indeed. Mutual concessions, "give and take," are the principles on which they are conducted. The discussions are carried on with the help of specialists, commercial, technical and military, so that often only a nominal direction is left to the diplomatic agent.

But, although in America and Europe the possibilities of diplomacy have narrowed down to the maintenance of mutual good will between nations, or the conclusion or prevention of alliances by appeals made to reason, national interest or national feeling, in Asia a wide field of action exists for the higher arts of the craft. There, European Governments meet the native authorities and one another on the ground of stealth, duplicity, treachery and corruption. There, local conditions of weakness and putrefaction foster unclean ambitions in the foreign breast, and have established between the European Powers a deadly rivalry which has recourse to every means suggested by unscrupulousness. In a general way, the greater the corruption in a country, the weaker and more degraded the character of its people, the greater is the sway of diplomacy. Secrecy and the prohibition of discussion relating to public affairs, such as exists in autocratic countries, provide it with additional chances. Turkey, China, Persia and all the other countries which make up the East, represent, with the exception of reformed Japan, the promised land of the diplomatist. There, humanity offers the Mephisto, disguised in embroidered uniform and cocked hat, an unusually abundant crop of weaknesses and vices to trade on. The diplomatist develops into perfection and dominates most in the midst of ignorance, degradation and corruption.

The knowledge of the inner workings of diplomacy and of the qualities it exacts from its adepts, as shown above, will help to explain the superiority of the Russian over the Briton in this particular branch of political activity.

A citizen of Great Britain is brought up as a boy in an at

mosphere of intense physical culture, which is the best preservative against mean instincts. It gives rise among the young, through the early opposition of characters and ambitions under sound pedagogic tuition, to a code of moral precepts of which manliness, with all its component attributes of truthfulness, fairness, personal dignity and pride, is the most prominent. As a grown-up man, he lives in an atmosphere of political liberty, administrative legality and honesty, and varied opportunity for success in life, which leaves no room for the exercise of any of those human impulses which entail a diminution of self-respect or an attempt on the weaknesses of others. These conditions of life stamp the minds and hearts of the British with an indelible mark of uprightness and a conception of duty to self and one another based on a high appreciation of humanity. As a consequence, they are unbending, unobservant, slow to read the character of others. They are loath to admit evil, and superior to the utilization of the opportunities which the accidental revelation of human frailty may offer them. Their nature is simple and their organization muscular, not nervous. Sport is their god. Science, art, love, do not play in their existence the same rôle as in that of other races. In an absolute sense, it is difficult to deny that they achieve morally and socially a very high, perhaps the highest, type of humanity; but in the exercise of diplomacy their qualities turn to their disadvantage. Land an Englishman on the diplomatic stage, and, nine times in ten, he is bound to play his part poorly, though animated by the greatest good will. I say "animated by good will" because, like every other country, indeed more than any other country, Great Britain, notwithstanding the individual character of her citizens, entertains and carries out a policy of covetuousness leading to the spoliation of others.

Owing to a process of self-deception rarely practised by Englishmen in private life, but for which their intense and blind patriotism is a frequent occasion, this policy is approved of readily by the community on the plea of the civilizing mission of Great Britain. The agent entrusted with its application gives it his whole heart and soul, and even condescends to dabble in the black art of diplomacy for its furtherance; but in this work he is handicapped by constitutional stiffness of mind and character. It is easier for him to be brutal and cruel than to be mean, cunning and false. His nature is to hew his way through difficulties, and not

to slip past them or dig his way under them. His natural distaste for trickery appears in the clumsiness with which he resorts to it. When he has struck a bargain for the purchase of a conscience, he carries out the terms with a bad grace expressive of high contempt for the degraded object of his designs, and he destroys in that way half of the effect of seduction. The maintenance of British rule in India is supposed to be a masterpiece of human skill, and, indeed, the machinery of government England has established there works admirably to-day. But it is founded more on principles of force and administrative efficiency than on principles of policy. By her contempt for the natives expressed in acts of brutality and impatience, by her inability to enter into their prejudices and to flatter their weaknesses, by her arrogant assumption of superiority of race upon every occasion, she destroys the effects of an otherwise beneficent, and in some ways skilful, rule, and keeps up a ferment of hatred among all classes, which has once already brought the Indian Empire within an inch of destruction, and justifies the opinion that another outbreak is possible and may be fraught with more terrible consequences. If it be true that this attitude forms deliberately part of her policy, as being a dangerous but the only means of dealing successfully with Orientals, how is it that Russia maintains her authority in Asia more firmly, to all appearances, by acting on opposite lines? All the successes of Great Britain are due to the unique advantages of her geographical position, to brutal force and timely luck intervening, in the shape of an unexpected combination of events, to maintain her threatened fortunes, none to foresight, sagacity or a deeply meditated plan of action. She has always dropped into situations unawares, turning them, "après coup" to account, thanks to her massive doggedness and pluck, but feeling rather surprised at the favorable turn of events. Her African policy alone in its last phase is the result of a well-defined conception of the future, but then what blindness, what carelessness and unpreparedness in the execution!

With his education and disposition, an Englishman is rarely a success socially except among his congeners. He is wanting in the art of conversation, graceful manners and flattery, what the French sum up in the expressions "entregent" and "savoir-vivre." When he appeals to womankind, it is as a fine physical specimen of humanity, tall, muscular, sporty, and on his cheeks the color

of the beef on which he is fed, deepened by exposure to the sun-an enviable form of attraction, assuredly, and one which is enhanced by the special charm emanating from its combination with the very awkwardness of the individual. But, as it takes two to quarrel, it takes two to get on, and the average Englishman is muscle-plated against the seduction of woman, as such. He is distant, cold and haughty, and disliked in proportion, and, it must be added, secretly respected in proportion. Consequently, if by any chance he combines foreign blandishments with his manly insular accomplishments and condescends to meet non-British humanity on terms of equality, he becomes the rage, for then he realizes a type which is full of novelty, and he appeals to that unlovely disposition of man to prize secretly, as a favor, any departure from frigidity on the part of the reserved and indifferent.

Several instances, taken from recent history, will show the clumsiness of English diplomacy. In the Armenian questionone in which humane purpose was allowed to have claims on the attention of the British Government to the extent of becoming the spring of intense official action-an initial mistake, according to the politician-Lord Rosebery and, after him, Lord Salisbury adopted methods whose failure any but an English statesman could have foreseen. It was they who, entertaining an object estimable in itself, but blemished by the introduction of feelings of spite and vengeance against Turkey for past grievances, pandered to hysterical agitation and transformed what was, no doubt, a harrowing episode of suffering, though such as exists in many countries, into an appalling tragedy, thus wrecking the existence of the people they were championing, who better advised might have steered out of their difficulties, and utterly ruining the prestige of the English name in the East-nay, holding it up to the anathemas of their very protégés. Continuing a policy of empty threats and intimidation, practised since the eighties, in place of the tactics formerly pursued at Constantinople, indulging on every occasion in a wanton display of contempt and provocation, for which Sir Philip Curry was an admirably chosen instrument as Ambassador at Constantinople, the English played with amazing naïveté into the hands of the Russians, and finally found themselves obliged to beat an ignominious retreat. It will take some time for the Irishman who acts to-day as British Ambassador at Constantinople, with a mission to inaugurate a more sensible

policy, to repair the effect of the blunders dictated to his predecessor by the Foreign Office.

In China and Persia, the decline of British supremacy and the corresponding increase of Russian influence-for it is always England or Russia in those parts-speak as eloquently of the inefficiency of Her Gracious Majesty's diplomacy.

The success of British exertions to achieve popularity in the United States, or rather to improve what was a desperate situation, is due more to accident than superior art. Without the Spanish war and the opportunity it afforded to England to render the States an immense service, we would probably still be witnessing, on this side of the Atlantic, the state of mind which resulted in the famous message of President Cleveland in the matter of the Venezuelan frontier. The brutal temper of British statesmanship broke out on the occasion of this war, as on so many others. The United States had to be gained over to Great Britain; therefore, it was natural and fit for her, apart from moral considerations, to proclaim her sympathy with the champions of Cuban independence. But in the name of what necessity, unless it be that of satisfying an irresistible inclination for blundering, did Lord Salisbury insult Spain by publicly ranking her with the degenerate and dying Powers, however true this might be in reality? Would it not have been better to have left those words unsaid than to say them, and then try to make amends by declaring, as Lord Salisbury did in a recent speech, that Spain, with industry and perseverance, had still a happy future before her?

I pass now to the Russian diplomacy. The Russian is differently equipped for the exercise of diplomatic duties. As a member of the Slav race, he is endowed with a natural flexibility of character which is wonderful and enables him to adapt himself to any circumstances. At school, his education is not as healthy, either morally or physically, as that of the Englishman, and it is more directed toward the improvement of the mind than of the body and soul. At home, he is familiarized with a state of society whose principal traits are subserviency to political power, mental and moral restraint in the wrong sense, and a complete dependency on official patronage for success in life. As a result, the Russian enters the competition of life restricted to the fields of functionarism and militarism, naturally prepared for and educated to artfulness. These defects carry along with them their qualities. He

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