Grossly improper
Is that what you are telling the French, Mr Soames? Naughty boy. You know it isn't true. You really ought not to tell the French things like that; they might think you were telling them the truth (although I readily concede that they are much more likely to think that whatever you tell them will be lies, the French being more convinced than any others of the true perfidy of Albion).
Still, for Mr Soames's sake, if for no one else's, let me correct him: the United Kingdom, whose government he represents in Paris, has so far neither solemnly nor ex- plicitly, nor even flippantly and secretly, undertaken to adopt anything whatever insofar as the European Economic Com- munity goes. It is grossly improper for Her Britannic Majesty's ambassador to France to suggest otherwise in a tendentious article contributed to a respected French newspaper, unless it be that Her Britannic British Majesty's ambassador knows no bet- ter: which can scarcely be the present case.
I cannot make up my mind whether it would be more to our good to be represented abroad by an ignorant fool than by a clever liar, but to consider this would be to raise far deeper problems of the best conduct of diplomacy.
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