announcement of a great "diplomatic victory" look extremely foolish. This is but a single illustration of the game that is being played with the American people by the representatives of the Central Empires. At the moments of highest tension "fog bombs" are discharged, if not from the German Embassy, from some other source of supply, "official" or "semi-official," and the issue again becomes obscure to the public gaze. It is little wonder that Mr. Lansing, the American Secretary of State, is off on a ten-days' holiday. He probably felt that a temporary retirement was needed to clear his vision and enable him to take a fresh hold upon the vexed question of German-American relations.

Realising their inability to bring about an embargo upon the export of war material, and somewhat checked in their strike agitation by the enforced exit of Dr. Dumba from the diplomatic circle, German efforts are now directed towards making trouble for British finance in America. This field for obstruction is not very promising for several reasons, most of them practical. Even the German bankers have suffered through the irregularity of sterling exchange, and we now find them in friendly conference with the Anglo-American Committee for the purpose of coming to some better arrangements than exist at present. Then, again, the money to be borrowed by England in the United States is presumably to establish a credit for the purchase of supplies of all kinds, a comparatively small percentage of which would come under the heading of munitions of war. In other words, the money is to remain in the country, and it is not conceivable that German effort to block the loan would meet with popular approval, or that German bankers and business men would find it to their advantage to become known as opponents of this British, or, rather, Allied credit.

It is a well-known fact that German-Americans have benefited largely through trading with England, France, and Russia, and that some of those who have been doing a lot of talking in favour of Germany have confined their patriotic efforts to noise, letting their deeds lead them into the more profitable channels of "trading with the enemy." According to Press reports during the past few days, it is intended by Germany to measure her strength in America by the success or failure of the British loan, with the idea of determining thereby whether or not it is of any value to the German cause to continue the fight for American “neutrality” as it would be defined in a German lexicon. There may be some truth in this, but it is probably only partially true. Many months ago the writer forecasted an increasingly difficult situation as existing between Germany and the United States as a result of questions arising out of the war. This forecast has been fully

justified with each passing month. Germany has been developing American public sentiment in every possible direction in hopes of deriving some advantage. Delay has certainly been secured as a result of these tactics, but through the acts of the Germans themselves, and the course pursued by the German Admiralty in its conduct of the war, the net results must be most disappointing to the Teutonic Governments.

Credit must be given to German representatives in America for a boldness, liberality of expenditure, and persistence in furthering their purpose, which, if results had been possible, they would have attained. Money, brute force, intrigue, and deception have been used to their utmost power. Tact and diplomatic skill have been wanting, as they generally have been in modern German diplomacy, but even in this direction they have been exercised sufficiently to inject confusion into the situation at times when a crisis was apparently inevitable, and thus postpone the inevitable "showdown" which must come some day if matters go on as during the past few months. When all possible means of obstruction have been exhausted, and this point has not yet been reached by any means, and German "fog producers are no longer effective, indifference to American action may naturally succeed to the present strenuous effort to secure some American action directly or indirectly favourable to German interests.

One of the strongest hopes Germany must have for possible future success in the United States-of a negative character perhaps, but still useful-must lie in Congress, for it is possible for her to secure strong co-operation from certain members. The pro-German Congressional delegation is not large, but it does not take many members to delay or obstruct the progress of business or to inject fruitless discussion into the proceedings when public attention needs to be diverted. To utilise this force to the best advantage is undoubtedly the German purpose, and if President Wilson puts the matter of German-American relations into Congressional hands he will certainly turn the legislative halls into a bear garden.

When a further Note comes from Germany anent the sinking of the Arabic, as has been requested by the American Government, and Secretary Lansing returns from his holiday, we may possibly get a flash of light which will penetrate the fog "made in Germany" which now envelops the whole German-American controversy. It is many months since the Lusitania was sunk, and the restless spirits of the hundreds of innocent victims of that premeditated crime are still unappeased.

JAMES DAVENPORT WHELPLEY.

THE NEW DIPLOMACY AND THE OLD TRADITION.1

"To democratise our diplomacy is a duty sure to be increasingly impressed for a long time to come upon the chief promoters of the experiment in co-operative politics now being witnessed. At the outset it should be said, as details will presently be brought forward to show, that the impending process, so far from introducing a revolution, would only mark a return to the popular methods which two centuries ago began to secure the best brains of the time for the diplomatic calling. Historic precedent, therefore, as well as present expediency, is in favour of Parliament giving earlier and fuller attention to the official suggestions brought together in manageable shape than at the present time it is to be feared they are likely to receive. The delay, however, can be only temporary; and in the sequel of these remarks the only plan for guaranteeing efficiency and capacity to our international service will be circumstantially shown.

Of the two departments concerned with our external administration, the Foreign Office in Whitehall has always been open without any condition of private means to those nominees of the Secretary of State personally approved by a committee of inspection first and successful afterwards in a competition at least as severe as was formerly that for the Indian Civil Service. The examination for diplomats aspirant has tended for many years to resemble more and more closely that for the Foreign Office, but with a supplementary sine quâ non of a personal income amounting to not less than £400 a year. Much of that sum has often been made up by prize fellowships. The career, therefore, has attracted the pick of the universities. The Commissioners now declare against the further continuance of all money qualification. The immense improvement in the intellectual and industrial standard of officers, even in the most fashionable Guards' regiments, tends to make the Army a self-supporting institution. As a further step towards giving diplomacy the same character, the Commissioners recommend that the cost of transfers from one chancery to another should no longer be a heavy burden to the young diplomatist. All expenses under this head are for the future to be defrayed by his employers, the State.

(1) The Fifth Report of the Civil Service Commissioners. George 111. and Charles Fox, Vol. II. By Sir G. O. Trevelyan, Bart. (Longman.) Foreign Relations. By Sir Spencer Walpole. (Macmillan's Citizen Series.) History of British Foreign Policy. By Arthur Hassall. (William Blackwood.)

In 1894 the amalgamation of the Foreign Office with diplomacy would have been finally and completely established if the Ridley Report had received not only approval but full adoption. Even as it was, some of its proposals had been practically anticipated by Grant Duff's and Lord Houghton's suggestions. Long before the interchange of the two services was effected here it had produced the best results in Germany and France. Some danger there was, or might have been, lest the process of fusion should be too hastily or sweepingly carried out. In all the most notable experiments that has been avoided.

The June list of birthday honours announced a peerage for the most distinguished of the Foreign Office contributions to diplomacy. Our Ambassador at Paris is now known by the style of Lord Bertie. Before going to Paris he had successively mounted every grade of the secretarial ascent, including both a Parliamentary and permanent Foreign Office Under-Secretaryship. Sir Arthur Henry Hardinge, our representative at Madrid, received the same kind of training before he accomplished the various stages landing him for the time at Henry Drummond Wolff's old place on the Manzanares. The present Lord Dufferin, the late Michael Herbert, or, to pursue the list, Sir Cecil Spring-Rice, our American Ambassador, and Sir H. Austin-Lee, formerly clerk in residence at the Foreign Office, to-day a member of the Suez Canal Board and a Counsellor of Embassy, all in their different ways illustrate the happy results of the official fusion once more in the present Report urged upon the Government.

So far from there being any dangerous novelty in the Commissioners' proposals, they practically recall us to the system under which diplomacy first neared its zenith, because it was free and open to all who could contrive or were fitted to enter it. In the twentieth century the official practice of the seventeenth will prove the true means of subjecting all new departures in imperial administration to supervision by the responsible representatives of an imperial democracy that shall reflect not only every section of the community at home, but all interests and orders of Greater Britain from Hong Kong to Ottawa. are working heavily and slowly through a war which will leave nothing as it was before, and which has taught every member of the race that the individual and collective exertions of all form the only bond and guarantee of a unity never likely to be free from the danger of attack from rival empires. Our fellow-subjects, however remote from us, of the mother country are fellow-taxpayers. The burden of Imperial honours and burdens is felt in its incidence by all. War has

We

brought the masses of the British Isles into socio-political as well as military comradeship with those over-sea. The personal careers thus opened up, their efficiency, methods and emoluments, are no longer matters to be controlled by cliques, often with an eye to the needs of the younger sons, who live on the State as their eldest brother does on the estate. The Australasian and transAtlantic colonies have anticipated rather than answered every call of empire. They have each their agents-general resident in London every year growing in dignity and approaching more closely to the India Office Council with which they have long been frequently in touch. This connection will by a natural process gradually extend to the Foreign Office as well. Places will be found for persons of colonial birth on Whitehall staffs.

The area for recruiting every branch of the service that deals with our external affairs will become automatically enlarged, with the result that, in process of time, the Foreign Office and its staff will be an epitome and reflection of whatever is best and most characteristic, without regard to station, wealth, or social prejudice, not only in this country, but wherever the Anglo-Saxon tongue is spoken. Our French Ambassador's welldeserved peerage has been already mentioned; his sixteenthcentury predecessor in the post, named Norreys, did not belong by birth to the noble and the wealthy. Burleigh suggested him to the Queen for his first-rate business aptitudes. So, too, with the diplomatist who after a couple of years superseded him, Sir Francis Walsingham. The great Queen had desired her chief Minister to find some one whom she could trust to bring friendly pressure to bear on the Court of Charles IX. in favour of the French Huguenots. Norreys only failed because no one could have succeeded in so utterly impracticable a commission.

After his recall neither Burleigh nor his royal mistress looked to any mere courtier, but to a hard-headed, keen-witted descendant of a Yorkshire legal stock, Sir Francis Walsingham. Neither of these British envoys to the French Court knew from experience much of the class that traditionally supplies the material for ambassadors and attachés. Like all others of their

class they were sent abroad to do a particular piece of business. Having dispatched this they returned to their native land, generally with a choice selection of useful and ornamental gifts for the sovereign lady who had sent them forth, sometimes enriched themselves by pickings and perquisites, but never or very rarely with any new access of social or personal prestige. The ambassador, appointed not merely ad hoc, but generally through a series of years to superintend British relations with the Court