There is much in the point of view in estimates of the diplomatic service. Some there have been, and there may still be some, who think of the head of a legation as the giver of very good dinners; and in the evidence forthcoming before the Select Committee, appointed by the House of Commons, in 1861, to inquire into the constitution and efficiency of the diplomatic service of this country, it was declared that the giving of good dinners is a quite necessary and very valuable part of the function of a diplomatist: ‘a good dinner goes a great way in diplomacy’[1] was the celebrated opinion twice[2] sworn to by Sir Hamilton Seymour, who had over forty years’ experience of diplomacy. The Head of the Foreign Office, again, may sometimes think of a diplomatist as one who is specially solicitous for his health. ‘You will be struck’, said Palmerston to a successor at the Foreign Office, in 1852, ‘with a very curious circumstance, that no climate agrees with an English diplomatist excepting that of Paris, Florence, or Naples’.[3] The schoolmaster, yet again, looking to the interest of his pupil as a hopeful attaché would emphasize the importance of handwriting—’a good bold hand with distinctly formed letters’,[4] and of having a command of excellent French: in recent years German was added as a second obligatory language for candidates in this country. The
- ↑ Report, supra, 207. Cf., on fêtes and entertainments, 123, 128, 166 (They ‘promote the efficiency of his political relations’—Stratford de Redcliffe), 232 (‘There can be no doubt that the more a man entertains the better his position becomes’—Lord Cowley).
- ↑ In 1850 as well as in 1861.
- ↑ Malmesbury, Memoirs of an Ex-Minister, under date March 11, 1852.
- ↑ ‘Regulations for the Examination of Unpaid Attachés, before the Civil Service Commissioners, as approved by Lord J. Russell, August 1859.’ Report, supra, 477.
for example, with Philip Stanhope, was no doubt an anomaly, but it was an anomaly which had its advantages.’ (See Chesterfield’s Letters.}
