A STUDY IN DIPLOMACY.*
Tim title of Mr. Kennedy's very interesting volume, which we are glad to see has reached a second impression very soon after its first appearance, is perhaps somewhat misleading. Diplomacy Old and New suggests to students of diplomatic history a wider range than the volume actually covers ; for its scope is confined, as the author points out in his preface, to " an attempt to study the personal methods of those who, in recent years, have directed the Foreign Policy of Britain." It consists of a series of critical studies of the character and activities of the various British Secretaries of State for Foreign Affairs from Lord Salisbury onwards, with just enough general history thrown in to make the account of their diplomacy intelligible.
It may be said at once that, within these limits, the book should have great educational value both at home and abroad. In view of the vast importance of the subject it is, indeed, amazing that until quite recently no comprehensive history of British foreign policy was even projected ; and even now only the first of the volumes of the new Cambridge History has actually appeared. If, then, foreign students of affairs have often misunderstood and misrepresented our attitude the fault is largely our own, since, with our fine disdain of mere scholarship, we have hitherto neglected the obvious means of enlightening them. This may account for the growth on the Continent of that legend of " perfidious Albion," which persists in spite of the professions of British statesmen conscious of the most honourable intentions. It is not the least of the merits of Mr. Kennedy's book that it gives the causes of the prevalence of this legend, and that these causes have been neither foreign malevolence nor British perfidy, but lay rather in the contradictions in our foreign policy due to the want of continuity formerly imposed by the Party system.
Mr. Kennedy points out that the greatest service which Lord Rosebery rendered to his country was that " he lifted Foreign Policy out of the factiousness of Party, to which it has not since returned." This had the immediate advantage that foreign statesmen felt that they were dealing—to quote Lord Rosebery—" not with a Ministry, possibly fleeting and possibly transient, but with a great, powerful, and united nation." It produced the further advantage that our foreign policy exhibited a continuity which was conspicuously lacking when, for instance, Gladstone succeeded Beaconsfield. While, how- ever, it has tended to produce a consistency which has done much to dispel the old impression of want of principle, it has had the incidental disadvantage—and it is a serious one—of depriving Parliament and the people of that education in foreign affairs which the criticism of a vigilant Opposition provided. This has led to the cry for open diplomacy and " democratic control," of which one is impossible and the other inexpedient. The middle course suggested by Mr. Kennedy is wiser and more practicable, namely, that more should be done by the publication of documents to instruct Parliament and public opinion outside. This course, as Mr. Kennedy points out, was taken by Lord Salisbury in the case of the Fashoda incident, and with the best results.
Lord Salisbury, indeed, as Mr. Kennedy paints him, may stand for the best type of British statesmanship, not only in the consistency with which he followed certain clearly defined principles, but in his readiness to admit mistakes and to amend them. These principles he laid down in 1865, long before, he was called upon to apply them. " In our foreigri policy," he said, " what we have to do is simply to perform our own part with honour, to abstain from meddling diplo- macy, to uphold England's honour steadily and fearlessly, and always to be rather prone to let action go along with words than to let it lag be .1rind them."
These were the principles underlying what mr. Kennedy understands by the " old diplomacy " of rtritain, and he makes it the " acid test " of the methods of each of Lord Salisbury's successors in turn. Neaily all stand the test fairly well. Lord grey of FEttio4lon, izteecl, • Diplomam Old and New. By A, I., Kennedy, Second Impression. limbs John way 4183. netri according to Mr. Kennedy, when he- went to the Foreign Office, knew a great deal about British birds and fishes but next to nothing about Continental habits and lan- guages. He made up for these defects, however, by being an English gentleman in the best sense of the word, and in less ominous times he would probably have ranked not only among the most upright, but among the most successful of our Foreign Ministers. Unfortunately, as Mr. Kennedy says, " his very success was a danger " ; for, by his force of character and sincerity, he " made concord appear where no concord was," and in the end he failed to maintain peace because " he would do anything for peace except fight for it." After the War broke out, too, Mr. Kennedy points out how Lord Grey could not compete with the Germans in fishing in the muddy waters of Balkan politics.
Mr. Kennedy's criticism of Lord Grey is blunted by his genuine admiration for his high qualities. His sharpest slings and arrows are reserved for the arch-champion of the New Diplomacy—Mr. Lloyd George, who " transgressed in turn every canon of diplomacy since he undertook the conduct of our foreign policy." For an enlargement on this theme we must refer our readers to Mr. Kennedy himself, merely calling attention to the fact that, in an appendix to the new impres- sion, he gives the peccant statesman credit for a death-bed repentance. " In the Near Eastern crisis of September- October, 1922," he says, " he adopted a wise and definite attitude at the outset, and did not deviate frofn it in spite of fierce criticism ; he left the actual conduct of negotiations to the Foreign Secretary and the British representatives on the spot, and he made it clear to the world that they enjoyed the fullest support of the home Government." But this change of heart came too late. " The vacillations of four years," concludes Mr. Kennedy, " have brought disillusionment to Greece, ruin to the Turkish Government of Constantinople which co-operated with us, and triumph to the rebel Govern- ment which defied our authority."
In conclusion, we may perhaps venture on a few exiticisms in detail, which may be useful in the probable event of the book passing into another edition. It is hardly true to say that the handing over of Bosnia and Herzegovina to Austria was the cause of Austria becoming a rival to Russia in the Balkans (p 41) ; the rivalry had already long existed, and the occupation by Austria of a portion of Serbia irredenta only accentuated it. The episode of the annexation of the occupied lands in 1908 is also perhaps too crudely described. That it constituted a serious breach of treaty obligations is true enough ; but it is also true that the Young Turk revolution had created a new situation, that it was not a question of ultimately handing over Bosnia-Herzegovina to Serbia, but of a demand by the Turkish Nationalists for their return, under the terms of the Treaty of Berlin, to a reformed and chastened Turkey.
The Austrian point of view is well and moderately stated by Professor Pribram in the new volumes of the Encyclopaedia Britannica, and his account generally of Austrian diplomacy in the Near Eastern Question is well worth comparing with that given by Mr. Kennedy. We confess also that, since Mr. Kennedy includes Professor Pribram's Secret Treaties of Austria-Hungary among his list of authorities. it is difficult to understand how he can say that Italy had " for a long time acted as a moral curb on the Triple Alliance." On p. 180 Mr. Kennedy says that " Lule Burgas sealed the doom of Turkey in Europe." The seal seems since to have been broken. Finally, it is to be regretted that Mr. Kennedy assumes (p. 202) that the revelations of the Casement Report on the Putumayo atrocities have been discredited by the later treason of its author. The present writer was in Peru at the time when the Report was first issued, in 1912, and had ample opportunities for making independent inquiries. If anything, the Report was an understatement of the truth, and he found that the terrilide conditions which it revealed were by no means confined to the Prittunayo region, or even to Peru. There was never any question of Britain becoming embroiled with the United States over this affair ; and, though there was talk in Lima of a Colombian plot to discredit Peru, there was no hint of any German plot to discredit England. It is to be hoped that, if Mr. Kennedy has no new evidence to support his statement, he will cut it out of his next edition.
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