In the customary argument against diplomatic secrecy, however, there is some confusion of thought. It is against secret _policies_, in which the national liability may be unlimited, that the only genuine protest can be raised; for such policies are the very negation of democracy, and the denial of the most fundamental of all popular rights, namely, that the citizen shall know on what terms his country may ask him to lay down his life. But this justification of popular control does not presuppose the publication of diplomatic negotiations. On the contrary, it rests on the assumption that the People and Parliament will know where to draw the line between necessary control in matters of principle and the equally necessary discretionary freedom of the expert in negotiation. It follows, therefore, that the case for reform is only weakened by those who make indiscriminate attacks against the whole Diplomatic Service--how richly deserved in some cases, how flagrantly unjust in others--and especially by those who profess to believe that the machinery of diplomacy could be made to run more smoothly by publicity. The modern Press is not so happy a commentator as all that; and we may here recall Napoleon’s apposite reflection: ‘_Le canon a tué la féodalité: l’encre tuera la société moderne_.’ If it is necessary for the public welfare that foreign policy should be known and intelligently discussed by the people whom it so closely concerns, it is just as necessary that the people should not meddle with the actual process of diplomacy, but, having made sure of getting the best of their public servants in their Foreign Service, should confidently leave such transactions undisturbed in the hands of the expert. In all the activities of government that is clearly the proper division of labour between the common people and the expert adviser; and in no department should it be more scrupulously observed than in foreign affairs. Readers of this little book--which Sir Ernest Satow recently called ‘a mine of political wisdom’--will quickly realise how much this introductory review of modern diplomacy owes to the suggestive maxims of François de Callières. And if they receive as much stimulus and pleasure from the following pages as the translator has enjoyed in preparing them, Louis Fourteenth’s plenipotentiary should gain a host of new friends. A. F. WHYTE. _To His Royal Highness, Monseigneur le Duc d’Orléans, Regent of the Kingdom._