First of all it is necessary to dispel a false notion which “the man in the street” has of diplomacy. He fondly thinks that diplomats, while preparing clever and mysterious combinations, fashion History. Now the experience of centuries shows that as a general rule diplomats merely chronicle History but do not make it. My teacher, Albert Sorel, neatly expressed that truth by saying: “Diplomats are History’s attorneys.” In fact, the diplomacy of any country helps to prepare and to fashion history only when there happens to be at its head a great man of large and just ideas, who knows how to apply these ideas by all the means available in his time. It is a strange fact and worthy of notice, that such a great man is rarely, if ever, a professional diplomat. For example, Richelieu, Napoleon, Palmerston, Disraeli, Cavour, Bismarck, who all prepared and fashioned History, were not trained diplomatists. Unfortunately, it does not seem that Fortune has endowed any of our Allied countries, either before or since the war, with a head capable of leading, on grand lines, the diplomatic affairs of the Entente. The latter therefore has been only served by those diplomats who are mere officials, and who as such await instructions from higher quarters, and these instructions are very often found wanting. Besides, the diplomacy of the Allies, not being seconded, like that of Germany, by novel means of observation, can only obtain the information it needs by methods still so old-fashioned that they are almost identical with those used a century ago. They are totally inadequate to point out the sequence of ideas or the rapid development of events which in Central Europe and the Balkans have been, as will be seen, the immediate causes of the war; nor are the means employed by our diplomats at all sufficient if they wish to recognize what forms the whole chain of the Pangerman organization. Just because this organization is huge, just because it is so complex, its total importance cannot be properly gauged unless the connecting links between the varied elements are clearly perceived. The typical professional diplomat lives in a world of his own. Either his information comes from the office or it is second-hand; it rarely is reached by direct observation of people or facts. The secretaries at the Embassies divide their time between office work, copying documents in copper plate hand, or social functions, pleasant enough but confined to a particular and narrow set. Few of the secretaries know the language of the country in which they reside, fewer still travel in the interior of the land in order to study it.