“We’ve advanced with the times, and they’ve emancipated women in England,” responded Edith mischievously, glancing merrily across at me.
Miss Foskett drew herself up primly, and declared that she hoped her niece would never become one of “those dreadful creatures who ape the manners of men;” to which my love replied that liberty of action was the source of all happiness.
Fearing that this beginning might end in a heated argument, I managed to turn the conversation into a different channel.
“If all we read in the newspapers is true, it would seem,” observed Aunt Hetty presently, “that you diplomatists have a most difficult task in Paris.”
“All is not true,” I laughed. “Much of what you read exists only in the minds of those imaginative gentlemen called Paris correspondents.”
“I suppose,” remarked Edith, smiling, “that it is impossible for either a diplomatist or a journalist to tell the truth always.”
“Truth, no doubt, is all very well in its place, and now and then in diplomacy, but only a sparing use should be made of it as a rule,” I answered. “But there should be no waste. Only those should be allowed to handle it who can use it with discretion, and who will ladle it out with caution.”
“Mr Ingram, I am surprised!” interrupted Miss Foskett, scandalised.
“It is our creed,” I went on, “that truth should be always spoken in a dead or foreign language, no home-truths being for a moment tolerated. Now think what a happy land this England of ours would be if only we were not so wedded to the bare, cold truth! Suppose for its own good purposes our Government has thought right to make a hasty dash for the back seats in the international scrimmage, and to adhere to them with all the tenacity of a limpet, why, for all that, should the Opposition journals blurt out the fact for our humiliation, when by a few deft scratches of the pen the leader-writer might easily make us believe that no back seat had ever in any circumstances been occupied by Britain, and that the nose of the lion had never been pulled out of any hole into which it had once been inserted? The itch for truth is, judged from a diplomatists point of view, responsible for the ruin of our policy towards our enemies.”
“Shocking, Mr Ingram! I’m surprised to find that you hold such views,” said Miss Foskett in a soured tone; while Edith laughed merrily, declaring that she fully agreed with my argument, much to her aunt’s discomfiture.