Imágenes de páginas
PDF
EPUB

the afternoon. Again, his daily needs are modest. He lives very simply in a very small flat and usually with no servant. He spends nothing on luxuries. He does not consider that his social status depends upon an appearance of prodigality. Above all, he is always ready to take a little less, because he and his wife always have, each of them, a little income from inherited capital. The Code Napoléon, which lays down that all property at death must be equally divided between the children, is responsible for this wide diffusion of small incomes; just as it is directly responsible for the low birth-rate, owing to families being deliberately limited to one child in order to keep properties together.

It is very little known in England how small are the salaries attached to quite important positions in France. These salaries were small enough even when the world value of the franc stood where it did before the war. They are smaller still to-day. It is a generally admitted fact that even in the open labour market wages in a country with a falling currency always lag behind in the race with prices, and although in France to-day the shortage of man-power is such that the supply of labour is certainly less than the demand, this rule does not fail to operate. In the case of fixed salaries it operates with still greater severity. The franc is worth about one-fourth of what it was; but although the salaries of public servants have been increased by certain allowances to bring them up to the cost of living they have never been multiplied, in the higher salaries, by much more than two. As the employment descends in grade and approaches the point where the public authority must enter into competition with the skilled or unskilled labour market the ratio increases, but it rarely touches three. It is difficult for an Englishman to understand how the salaried worker in the French middle class can live at all; still less how he can keep up a decent appearance as he does, and live a life of some social and many intellectual graces. It would be impossible if it were not for the amazing thrift of the French people.

It may be worth while to take a few concrete examples of French salaries. The highest permanent official employed by the City of Paris gets 35,600 francs a year all told (or £400 with the franc at 90). He got less than half this in francs before the war. The chief engineer gets 28,600 francs, and many responsible professional appointments, such as those of chemists, are not worth more than 11,600 francs (or roughly £130 a year); that

figure is well above the average in the administrative and clerical services, which, as above stated, is now only equal to £74. In all other forms of public employment it will be found that the plums are no bigger and the average is about the same. In the army a Marshal of France gets as little as 38,000 francs (roughly £420); a Lt.-Colonel is paid less than half that sum, and a captain of long service less than a third. Judicial appointments are no better. The salary of the highest in France at present exchange value is only about £380 a year, while presidents of the important courts of justice are paid about £270. Even an ambassador, who is given a high salary because his expenses are heavy, is limited to 58,000 francs (or about £640). With the exception of the President of the Republic, the French delegate to the Reparations Commission, whose salary is fixed on a British and American rather than a French basis, is the most highly paid official in France.

To understand these things about France, as to understand most other things about her, it must be remembered that although in logical clarity, in general education and in artistic sensitiveness she has the most cultivated mind in Europe, in practical affairs her mind remains that of the Peasant State-a highly organized and administratively centralised Peasant State, no doubt, but still a Peasant State in essence. That is why her sons will fight and die for the soil, why they are highly individual, why they are secretive, why they live simple lives, why they save money and why they hate paying it.

PHILIP CARR

I.

2.

THE OLD DIPLOMACY AND THE NEW

DEMOCRACY

White Papers, Miscellaneous, No. 5, 1912 (Cd. 6102) and No. 19, 1924 (Cmd. 2282).

The School for Ambassadors and Other Essays. By J. J. JUSSERAND. Fisher Unwin, 1924.

3. Old Diplomacy and New: from Salisbury to Lloyd George, 1876-1922. By A. L. KENNEDY. With an Introduction by Sir VALENTINE CHIROL. Murray. 1922.

4. Modern Democracies. By Viscount BRYCE. Macmillan. 1921.

5. Diplomacy Old and New. By GEORGE YOUNG. Swarthmore Press. 1921. 6. Democracy and Diplomacy. By ARTHUR PONSONBY. Methuen. 1915.

IF

66

F there be one thing which a diplomatist ought to avoid it is a joke. The gift of humour it is essential he should possess; from indulgence in wit he must at all times rigorously refrain. Three hundred and twenty-one years ago Sir Henry Wotton, then on his way to take up the English Embassy at Vienna, wrote in the album of a German merchant at Augsburg these words: Legatus est vir bonus peregre missus ad mentiendum reipublicae causa." Diplomacy has never outlived the slur thus cast upon it by an ambassadorial jest. But though written in jest, was not the sentence serious? Perhaps there lingered in Sir Henry Wotton's mind the words of Carlo Pasquali, written only six years earlier: "I want the ambassador to shine by truth, the best assured of virtues. . . . But I am not so boorishly exacting as to close entirely the lips of the envoy to officious lies" (Causa Officii).

But what is a lie? That is a problem which has from time immemorial engaged the curiosity of professional casuists. Whatever their conclusion may be-and it is never likely to be reached-diplomatists and other "officious " persons may well

rest content with the well-known definition: "A lie consists in not speaking the truth to one who has a right to know it." The ethical problem, attractive though it be, cannot however be discussed here; the curious in these matters may be referred to M. Jusserand's erudite and entertaining essay. A passing reference to the casuistical controversy is permissible only because

it appears to throw some light upon the disfavour, not to say abhorrence, with which the ways of " diplomacy" are regarded by many conscientious people who strive to keep “democracy" in the straight and narrow path of absolute morality.

What precisely is meant by" diplomacy"? The system is of such recent origin that the word is not to be found in Johnson's Dictionary. The New Oxford Dictionary defines it thus: “The management of international relations by negotiation." But it proceeds to quote (as illustrating common usage) the following passage from Grattan's "Beaten Paths" (1862): "I can find no better signification for the word which typifies the pursuit than double dealing ... it is expressive of concealment if not of duplicity." Nor can it be denied that, slight though the justification may be, the word has acquired this connotation. More particularly since the outbreak of the Great War has this connotation been emphasised. Attacks upon what in current phraseology it is fashionable to describe as the " Old Diplomacy," sporadic before the Great War, have since become concentrated and persistent.

That some dissatisfaction should prevail is not perhaps a matter for surprise. If the traditional methods of conducting international affairs did not actually contribute to the outbreak of the world-war, they certainly failed to avert it. Could crude democracy have failed more lamentably? Could "open diplomacy have led to more fatal results than the traditional method of secrecy? Might not untutored honesty have succeeded better than the accumulated wisdom and ripe experience of the masters of a curious and antiquated craft? Such questions are perhaps somewhat querulous; they suggest that sufficient account has not been taken of the many crises which the "Old Diplomacy" successfully surmounted, the many awkward corners which by tact, patience and experience were turned; above all, they ignore the strength of popular passions which diplomacy can control even less effectually than it can the ambition of princes and the machinations of autocratic ministers. Nevertheless, criticism is not unnatural in view of the devastating catastrophe in which the world was in fact engulfed in 1914. Yet if by that catastrophe the failure of the old diplomacy was made manifest, it may be plausibly argued that it was less the failure of insolent strength than of pitiable weakness or inadequate authority.

War, be it always remembered, marks not the triumph but the failure of diplomacy. Étienne Dolet, one of the most famous and most delicate scholars of the Renaissance, justly observed in his "De Officio Legati " (1541) that the paramount duty of an ambassador is "zealously to act in such a fashion that he be rather the maker of peace and concord than discord and war." Nor can it be doubted that this sentiment has fairly represented the common aspiration, no less than the paramount duty, of diplomacy ever since diplomacy became a specialised profession. That the aspiration has been very imperfectly realised is painfully evident; yet that it has, in the main, inspired diplomacy can be denied only by cynicism or ignorance. Moreover it is to be observed that the attacks upon the " old " diplomacy have become noticeably less virulent and less persistent since the equally unsatisfactory results attained by the " new " diplomacy have been made manifest. Nevertheless, the opinion is still widely prevalent that the traditional methods of diplomacy are what the world-in its ignorance of Machiavelli-is pleased to term Machiavellian, with the implied suggestion that it represents the wiles of the devil. What then is exactly the indictment levelled against the old diplomacy by the new democracy; what is the precise nature of the disease from which the former is supposed to suffer, and what are the appropriate remedies which it may be advisable to apply?

[ocr errors]

Primarily it is urged that the existing system is undemocratic. The views of Mr. Arthur Ponsonby, a leading member of the Union of Democratic Control and the Parliamentary UnderSecretary for Foreign Affairs in the Socialist ministry, may perhaps be taken in this matter as fairly representative. "The method and machinery used for conducting foreign affairs (he writes) is not in harmony with the spirit of democracy." In passing it may be remarked not only that the "spirit of democracy" is something particularly elusive but also that in this connection " democracy itself stands in need of definition. Even in the modern world democracy assumes many forms. Does Mr. Ponsonby mean the parliamentary type of democracy familiar to us in this country, or the totally distinct type which commended itself to the people of the United States of America, technically known as Presidential Democracy? Or does he mean the Swiss type of democracy, the form which is claimed by Swiss jurists to be "the only true VOL. 241. NO. 492.

X

« AnteriorContinuar »