'mere headless trunks of despatches, without heads or legs, and with a large hole run through the body'?[1] He must try to find out whether the 'most secret letters' that precede, accompany or follow even confidential dispatches are still available, and how far they explain what the dispatch has intentionally left partly hidden. Much remains; and for that he will have to go, not to speeches and writings of the day, whether officially inspired, independent or irresponsible—however helpful and necessary these may be for a knowledge of the general situation and an understanding of the psychology of a people—but to the most intimate revelations of the prime movers, and to private letters and journals of those who had the privilege of knowing, or to whom came the chance of hearing, with perhaps a fatal facility and imagination in describing. For material of this kind we have usually had to wait at least a generation after the time of the events themselves. Even then there may be the 'one thing unknown'. The admission should be less rare—and why churlish?—on the part of historical writers.[2]
Bismarck is reported to have said that diplomatic reports are little better than paper smeared with ink, if the object in view be the truth of things and possession of material for history. Even the dispatches that do contain information cannot be understood except by those who know the writers and the men and the things written about. One must know, he said, what a Gortschakoff, a Gladstone, or a Granville had in his mind when he made the statements that are reported in the dispatch.
- ↑ Essays by the late Marquess of Salisbury: Foreign Politics (1905), 210. The essay entitled 'Foreign Policy' appeared first in 1864.
- ↑ In this and the two preceding paragraphs I have made use of part of a pamphlet entitled International Relations, which I wrote in February 1916 for The Historical Association of Scotland, and which was reprinted for The Historical Association (of England).
