[B] He writes that when “I was an attaché at Stockholm, the present Queen, the 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 believed that this is due to the fact of the milk of his nurse having been slightly sour last evening.’ I telegraphed this to the Foreign Office.”
The term “secret diplomacy” is during this period used in a special sense, referring to a secret intrigue on the part of a monarch or minister without the knowledge of those who have the public responsibility in the matter. Earlier monarchs often played their own game without informing their ministers and attempted to keep the threads of foreign intrigue in their own hands. Louis XV did great injury to his country by pursuing this method.
Napoleon III was a great offender in this respect. Not only was his international policy prone to unscrupulous attempts and proposals, but he acted in these matters frequently without informing those who were responsible before the country. Most of his secret advances to Bismarck were made entirely on his own responsibility; he did not inform the Foreign Minister, Ollivier, of the fateful instructions to Benedetti to the effect that he should demand of Prussia assurances that no German prince should ever again be suggested for the Spanish throne; his Mexican policy, too, was worked out by himself, in conjunction with the Duc de Morny and Jecker, the banker, rather than with his ministers. The disastrous consequences of the secret diplomacy of Napoleon III will be reverted to later on.
It has also repeatedly happened that envoys have incurred a strong suspicion of playing a political game of their own without the authorization or even the knowledge of their Foreign Minister. While a diplomatic representative in taking such action risks disavowal and dismissal, yet the temptation felt by a strong-willed man who is confident that he knows the local situation and the needs of his country there better than any one else, has often been too powerful to be resisted. When the unauthorized action has been successful in gaining some advantage, it has generally been condoned.[C] But though the home government is at all times able theoretically to disavow unauthorized actions of its foreign representatives, yet the latter through their self-willed acts may have set in motion forces which can no longer be controlled. Very often also doubt and confusion is cast on the real causes of important events and a general feeling of suspicion is thus generated.
[C] Frequently, indeed, ministers have been encouraged to make certain démarches “on their own account”; if successful, they could be sanctioned after the event. Such is the procedure which Palmerston criticized in a letter to Lord Clarendon (May 22, 1853):
“The Russian Government has always had two strings to its bow—moderate language and disinterested professions at Petersburg and at London; active aggression by its agents on the scene of operations. If the aggressions succeed locally, the Petersburg Government adopts them as a fait accompli which it did not intend, but cannot, in honor, recede from. If the local agents fail, they are disavowed and recalled, and the language previously held is appealed to as a proof that the agents have overstepped their instructions.”
One of the most self-willed of British Ministers was Stratford Canning (Lord Stratford de Redcliffe). It is generally accepted that his personal diplomacy at Constantinople, where he began his diplomatic career in 1808 and where he ended it in 1858 after various intervening missions, was one of the causes which brought on the Crimean war. After reciting that Lord Stratford constantly held private interviews with the Sultan and did his utmost to alarm him, urging him to reject accommodation with Russia, and promising him the armed assistance of England, John Bright stated that all this was done without instructions from the home government. Lord Clarendon wrote: “He is bent on war and on playing the first part in settling the great Eastern question.” When the war came on, Lord Granville wrote: “We have generals whom we do not trust, and whom we do not know how to replace. We have an Ambassador at Constantinople, an able man, a cat whom no one cares to bell, whom some think a principal cause of the war, others the cause of some of the calamities which have attended the conduct of the war; and whom we know to have thwarted or neglected many of the objects of his Government.”
Labouchere, who served under Lord Stratford in 1862, wrote afterwards that the despatches of Stratford during the Crimean war could not be recognized as the originals from which Mr. Kinglake drew his material for a narrative of the ambassador’s career.[D] He thought that Stratford’s great power at Constantinople was due to his long stay there which made it necessary for the Turks to remain on good terms with him. Labouchere also claims that Lord Stratford misled his own government by getting the Sultan to publish certain reform decrees which he would send home as evidence of good government, never explaining that such decrees were entirely dead letters.
[D] Labouchere wrote: “Lord Stratford was one of the most detestable of the human race. He was arrogant, resentful and spiteful. He hated the Emperor Nicholas because he had declined to accept him as Ambassador to Russia and the Crimean war was his revenge. In every way he endeavored to envenom the quarrel and to make war certain.”
The danger and disadvantage of having a diplomat or ruler inject his personal ambitions and dislikes into his diplomacy have, unfortunately, been frequently exemplified. With respect to the causes of the Crimean war, it will be remembered that Napoleon III had a personal grudge against Emperor Nicholas who had addressed him “Sire and Good Friend” instead of “Brother” as is customary among monarchs. Though Napoleon answered him, acknowledging the compliment implied from the fact that one may choose one’s friends but not one’s brothers, yet he never forgot the slight.