THE BAGMAN-DIPLOMAT.
[To THE EDITOR OP THE " SPECTATOR.") Stn,—You were good enough to refer last week to an article of mine in this month's National Review on the "Finance of China." After outlying the general argument of that article you observe that I had " failed to convert you to belief in the bagman-diplomat." I take this to mean, not that you doubt the existence of the species, but that you consider its production and employment inconsistent with the dignity of Britain's foreign policy and unnecessary for the furtherance of our trade. May I be allowed to point out that, whether we like it or not, in countries like China, where our merchants have extra-territorial rights, countries without regular process of law or administration of justice, every British representative is essentially and of necessity a bagman-diplomat P To the Legation in the last resort comes every concessionnaire's nn- settled claim, every trader's grievance unredressed, so that most of the activities of H.B.M. Minister at Peking are per- force expended in pressing commercial and financial claims, and the Chinese Government has been for many years (to use Lord Salisbury's expression) "a it achine for registering pres- sure." In Paris, Berlin, Vienna, or Washington our diplomats need not be bagmen for obvious reasons; in Constantinople, Teheran, and Peking they are, and needs must be. The question is therefore, not whether wo should believe in bagmen-diplomats, but whether, their existence being recog- nized as inevitable, we should endeavour so to train and equip them that they may be able successfully to compete with the scientifically organized bagmen of other countries, notably those of Germany and Japan. To pretend, as is our official way, that in countries like China commerce and finance can be handled as matters independent of politics is a palpable absurdity. The persistence of this fallacy can only be explained by the lamentable fact that the Far Eastern policy of Downing Street in recent years has been framed and guided by financiers—more concerned for their own profits than for British interests—whose cosmopolitan tendencies are notorious. The German bagman-diplomat is scientifically trained to bag; our British method of handling political finance simply assists him to that end.—I am, Sir, &c.,
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