Page:The Practice of Diplomacy - Callières - Whyte - 1919.djvu/88

use the occasion to pay an old debt to some powerful patrician family or to some blackmailer behind the scenes. Those who take the responsibility of appointing to high diplomatic offices persons of this character are responsible before God and man for all the injuries which may thereby accrue to the public interest. It cannot be too plainly stated that, while in many cases where trouble has arisen the negotiator himself is to blame, the true responsibility must rest with the minister at home, who not only devises the policy itself but chooses the instruments of it. It is therefore one of the highest maxims of good government that the public interest must be supreme, and that therefore both the prince himself and his ministers must steel themselves to resist the pressure of friends and relations who seek employment for unworthy persons. In diplomacy, above all things, since peace and war and the welfare of nations depend upon it, the best minds, the most sagacious and instructed of public servants should be appointed to the principal foreign posts regardless of the personal affairs of the prince himself or the party attachments of the chosen ambassadors.

'We have fools in Florence, but we do not export them.'Nothing should stand in the way of the creation of a vigilant, sagacious, and high-minded diplomatic service. Men of small minds should content themselves with employment at home, where their errors