If diplomacy be a labour in exile, the state should see to it that it is at least an honourable exile. To counteract this drawback, the home government should so reform the system of diplomacy that it may offer attractions to the most ambitious as well as to the most refined spirits. There is no reason why not merely honour but adequate daily recompense for his services should not be offered to the diplomatists from the very beginning of their career. Having regard to the expenses which fall upon the diplomatists of all ranks in their service abroad, and in maintaining the honour of their own profession and their country, the prince will be well advised to pay good salaries and in other ways to mark his esteem of the diplomatic profession. Thus and thus alone can a prince gather round him a diplomatic bodyguard worthy of the name. If he follows this advice, his diplomatic service will quickly outstrip all others and a deeper mutual confidence will arise between himself and his diplomatic agents upon which the success of all his negotiations will rest secure. No diplomatist is less to be envied than he who finds himself at a foreign court bereft of the confidence of his own. [Sidenote: _Value of a Well-Equipped Service._] Now the equipment of the state in diplomacy will be incomplete unless the diplomatic service contains within its ranks so large a number of practised and seasoned diplomatists that the King may be able to retain several of them at his side as special advisers in foreign affairs. In every campaign the true commander will take as much trouble for his reserves as for his first line of attack, and similarly the position of reserves in diplomacy has a great importance, for it means not only that the Minister for Foreign Affairs will have at his elbow a number of skilled diplomatists to assist him in a moment of crisis, but also that when one of the embassies abroad suddenly falls vacant his choice of a successor will not be too narrowly restricted. He thus will be able to avoid the fatal practice, which has prevailed too often in recent French history, of having to choose an ambassador haphazard at the last moment from among the courtiers and hangers-on at the palace. [Sidenote: _The Right Man in the Right Place._]