all, these gentlemen prepared their {53} dishes _à l'eau_, but such thin, mawkish water soup as this, devoid of the least symptom of richness, positively astounds me. Send me your village schoolmaster or road inspector, clean washed and combed; they will make just as good diplomatists as these."[8] Of diplomatic literature Bismarck observed: "For the most part it is nothing but paper and ink. If you wanted to utilise it for historical purposes, you could not get anything worth having out of it. I believe it is the rule to allow historians to consult the F. O. Archives at the expiration of thirty years (after date of despatches, etc.). They might be permitted to examine them much sooner, for the despatches and letters, when they contain any information at all, are quite unintelligible to those unacquainted with the persons and relations treated of in them."[9] Labouchere wrote in 1889: "If all Foreign Office telegrams were published, they would be curious reading. Years ago I was an attaché at Stockholm. The present Queen, then Duchess of Ostrogotha, had a baby, and a telegram came from the Foreign Office desiring that Her Majesty's congratulations should be offered, and that she should be informed how the mother and child were. The Minister was away, so off I went to the Palace to convey the message and to inquire about the health of the pair. A solemn gentleman received me. I informed him of my orders, and requested him to say what I was to reply. "Her Royal Highness," he replied, "is as well as can be expected, but His Royal Highness is suffering a little internally, and it is thought that this is due to the milk of the wet nurse having been slightly sour yesterday evening." I telegraphed this to the Foreign Office."[10]