Читать книгу Secret Diplomacy: How Far Can It Be Eliminated? онлайн

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In reading the memoirs and letters of this time, one will encounter a great many protestations of conventional morality, as well as an understanding of human nature and a comprehensive grasp of the details of international rivalry. But far-seeing ideals of wisdom, moderation, and justice, and of human coöperation will not frequently be met with; there is no searching vision of realities. Nor will one gain from these memoirs very specific information about the actual methods of doing diplomatic business. These methods, even the particularly unscrupulous ones, were probably considered almost as natural processes, to be passed by without mention. But incidentally, one may receive hints, even in the correspondence of the most correct and guarded diplomat, sufficient to reconstitute their current manner of thought and action.

We encounter there all the artifices of a secret service versed in the stratagems and tricks through which information can be obtained,—the stealing of documents, bribery of public officials, general misrepresentation and deceit. Matters are often so inextricably complicated that it must have required the greatest effort to remember what each participant in that particular intrigue knew or was supposed not to know, what he could be told and what must be kept from him. These are still the more venial methods; but when the welfare of the state required, it might even be necessary, as in the case of war, to dispose of inconvenient and obstructive individuals by wrecking their reputation or even by putting them out of the way altogether.