Orv Dieromacy sup New. 1876-1922. From Sazissuay ro Lioyp Groncr. By A. L, Kennedy, M. GE. John Murray. 18/- net. is a bold thing to write a book on Diplomacy for the reading of the general e public in these days. And the book needs patience in the reading. Not that it is ill-done. On the contrary it is very well done, But the name of diplomacy does not command the credit that it did in the unpolitical mind of the general public.
It is too apb te arouse passionate words of resentment or the post war shrug of disillusioned bitterness.
This history of the foreign policy of Britain from Salisbury to Lloyd George, with the necessary accounts of the concomitant policies of other European countries, is excellently compiled from carefully selected sources.
It is, of course, written with a bias, og any sincere book of the kind must be.
But the bias probably coincides with that of the majority of its readers, people by whom the name Diplomacy is still held in. respect.
On the other hand, one cannot but feel that the book will have readers whose bias is contrary to that of the author's, and so it challenges tht probe of that bias for contributory causes of the cataclysm our diplomacy was powerless to avert in 1914. Herein lies the courage of the publication. For it cannot be denied that the history offers plenty of opportunities of unimpeachable adverse criticism of Britain's, as well as other European countries', foreign policies.
The history of the "old" diplomacy, which takes up the bulk of the book, makes, in truth, sad reading. Even the tale of the beginning of the "new" diplomacy, according to the author's ordi differentiation, does not hold out much hope for the peace of mankind to the unpolitical mind.
itie: The postwar negotiations were sadly tainted with the old trickeries. For the bulk of mankind the first gleam of the new international frankness of attitude, the "new" diph of the future, shone at the Washington Conference.
Even that Con-Terence was not free from duplicity ~—on the part of France. But at that Conference hope and a wistful faith were raised from the dead. The possibility of frank 1 international exchanges, agreement, goodwill, lives again.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.