The publication of Prince Lichnowsky's memorandum furnishes evidence which even the most skeptical Englishman can hardly question of the peculiar system of dualism practiced by the German Foreign Office in the conduct of its diplomacy abroad. To those who had opportunities of observing its methods at close quarters this is no new revelation. The German Foreign Office has almost invariably conducted its diplomatic work abroad through two or more different channels, for it was always too tortuous and complicated to be intrusted to any single agent. There was the public policy directed toward more or less avowable ends to be propounded in official dispatches and conversations, and there was "the higher policy" to be promoted by means of discreet propaganda in the press and in society, and especially by appropriate appeals to the prejudices or interests of political and financial and commercial circles. Hence in the more important posts abroad it was the habit of the Wilhelmstrasse to rely mainly upon the Councilor of Embassy both to check the proceedings of the Ambassador and to manipulate all the complicated threads of its diplomatic network in which, for various reasons, it was deemed inexpedient for the Ambassador to get himself entangled, sometimes lest inconvenient disclosures might impair his influence with the Government to which he was accredited, and sometimes--as in the case of Prince Lichnowsky in London, and of the late Prince Radolin in Paris--because the Ambassador's personal sense of honor or his belief in the superiority of honorable statesmanship recoiled from the duplicity of "the higher policy." * * *