British Embassy

“ Tilford laughed.
‘That’s a good one on you,’ she said. ‘Colonel Winter is right out of your British Embassy at Washington. He’s a very, very great friend of mine. He's some kind of dyed-in-the-wool attaché there. I shall enjoy introducing you to one another. It's such fun seeing two Englishmen meet for the first time; they’re just like a pair of strange dogs.’
‘British Embassy, eh?’ said Conway quickly. ”

“ In the meantime he would wire to the British Embassy for confirmation of our story. We now gave up hope, for we knew it was extremely unlikely that the Embassy would ever receive the wire.
We walked sadly back to the hotel, leaving the car in the charge of the police officials. Regretfully we thought of all the beautiful wars breaking out in every direction in which it was now unlikely we would be able to take part. War is inspiring and attractive to all who have not fought. ”

“ The existing Russian embassy was the Polish embassy. The Dutch and the Swedes acquired pleasant properties on the same slope. All these big gateways and gardens opening off the Grande Rue give colour to another theory for the Turkish name of Pera—that it was originally Bey Yolou, or the Street of Grandees.
The British embassy is by no means so young a member [174] of this venerable diplomatic colony as our own, but its early traditions are of a special order. They are bound up with the history of the Levant Company. ”

“ The whole training of British diplomacy is to continue the traditions of Pitt and Beaconsfield. Diplomacy does not, alas! admit a new and modern régime affecting the world; it ignores modern thought, modern conditions and modern methods. “Up-to-date” is an expression unknown in the diplomat’s vocabulary. The Foreign Office instil the lazy, do-nothing policy of the past, the traditions of Palmerston, Clarendon and Dudley are still the traditions of to-day in every British Embassy throughout the world ”

“ But since you seem to live in an atmosphere of peril, why not seek to escape from it?”
[193]
“How?”
“There is a way open to you,” said Wilfrid, with a sudden and bold inspiration. “The British Embassy is about to be re-established at St. Petersburg. Let that be your asylum. Come with me this night. Tell the Ambassador your secret history. Make him the guardian of your person. Under the protection of England you will be safe.”
“Lord Courtenay,” she said decisively, “yours is an impossible remedy.” ”

“ The diplomats have always had an affection for Voisin's, perhaps because of its nearness to the street of the Embassies; and in the "eighties" the attachés of the British Embassy used to breakfast there every day. Nowadays, the clientèle seems to me to be a mixture of the best type of the English and Americans passing through Paris, and the more elderly amongst the statesmen, who were no doubt the dashing young blades of twenty-five years ago. ”

“ The impression he left upon me was that for some reason or other the authorities at the Vatican decidedly wish to have some sort of agent there, from whom they could receive information respecting the views of the British Government upon the accuracy of which they could fully rely.
I don't think that if it had depended on me I should have discontinued the unofficial agent, awkward as the position had been made by the presence of the Italian Government and of a regular British Embassy. But to establish one now would be a question of far greater difficulty than to have kept one going. ”

“ In November 1867 he became secretary of embassy at Berlin, and in June 1868 was transferred to Paris in the same capacity with the titular rank of minister plenipotentiary. He served under Lord Lyons [q. v.] throughout the exciting incidents of the Franco-German war, following him to Tours when the capital was invested by the German forces, and returning with him to Paris on the conclusion of peace. He was left in charge of the British embassy during the first weeks of the Commune, when the ambassador had accompanied the French ministry to Versailles. ”

“ My English editor, on the occasion of my earliest physical conflict with the Mailed Fist in Berlin, doubtless recalls taking me to task for invoking the protection of the United States Embassy, just as my British colleagues, concerned in the same imbroglio, had invoked the aid of their Embassy. Of the reams I have written for the Daily Mail in my day, I never sent it anything which sprang more sincerely from the heart than the message to its editor that I had not renounced allegiance to my country when I pledged my professional services to a British newspaper. ”

“ The British ambassador had a large staff of thoroughly trained secretaries and attaches, the very best of their kind,—well educated to begin with, thoroughly trained afterward,—serving as antennae for Great Britain in Russian society; and as the first secretary of his embassy he had no less a personage than Henry Howard, now Sir Henry Howard, minister at The Hague, one of the brightest, best-trained, and most experienced diplomatists in Europe. ”

“ Our government was never in so good a condition to pursue such a policy. It has a prestige among oriental nations before unknown. Its voice, when it speaks with an imperative tone, will now be heard. The question for it is far larger than a missionary question. An influential American citizen has lately written me from an oriental country where our requests have received little attention, saying: "If our government proposes to do nothing for American citizens they should say so and turn us over to the care of the British embassy." ”

“ The hotel of the British embassy is one of the best in Paris—fine reception-rooms opening on a very large garden, and a large courtyard and side exit—so there was no confusion of carriages. He had need of all his room—Paris was crowded with English. Besides all the exposition people, there were many tourists and well-known English people, all expecting to be entertained at the embassy. All the world was there. The Prince and Princess of Wales, the Marshal and Madame de MacMahon, the Orléans princes, Princesse Mathilde, the Faubourg St. ”

“ The charge of ignorance brought against the French Ambassador at Vienna was probably quite correct, but the British Embassy at Vienna must have been in the same case, for the existence of the Austro-German alliance was first discovered by that extremely able public servant, the late Sir Joseph Crowe, K.C.M.G. [26] As for the alleged inaction of the French Ambassador at London, that official was a retired admiral, whom apparently Waddington seldom seems to have consulted, and over whose unconscious head business was habitually transacted by the French Foreign Office. ”

“ There were ugly rumours of complications in the Transvaal. The fate of certain nations trembled in the balance. In every capital diplomatists were active, some striving to force war, others endeavouring to prevent it. A diplomatist’s life is assuredly no sinecure. The British public, as I have said before, little dreams of the constant anxiety and terrible tension which are parts of the daily life of its faithful servants abroad.
On my return to the Embassy I found that some important despatches had been brought from London by Anderson, the foreign service messenger. ”

“ The mysterious visitor who had called at that extraordinary hour was one of the most trusted and faithful servants at the disposal of the Foreign Office. Although nominally holding the appointment of military attach at the Embassy in Rome, he was in reality the chief of the British Secret Service on the Continent, a man whose career had been replete with extraordinary adventures, to whose marvellous tact, ready ingenuity, and careful methods of investigation, England was indebted for many of the diplomatic coups she had made during the past dozen years or so. ”

“ I wanted permission to read in the National Library in Paris. All Frenchmen are allowed to read there and, in addition, all the personal friends of the foreign ambassadors. By a convenient fiction, everybody is the friend of this ambassador, and is given a letter to prove it, provided he will call at the Embassy and get it. That is how I came to be a friend of the British Ambassador. Whether our friendship will ripen into anything warmer and closer, it is not for me to say. ”

“ For the purpose of removing any doubt about the concord of the two Governments, the Amir has been addressed to depute a confidential agent to my camp. The British force will not punish or injure anyone except the persons who have taken part or joined in the massacre of the Embassy unless they offer opposition. All the rest, the small and great, who are unconcerned (therein) may rest assured of this. Carriage and supplies of every description should be brought into the British camp. Full price and hire shall be paid for everything that may be taken. ”

“ Legation, or embassy, formerly meant the particular business, the errand, so to speak, upon which the ambassador was sent.
These terms are now used more often to designate the officers themselves who are sent on an embassy, and finally by the extension of the term they also mean the official residence of those officers.
American legations as a rule have fewer members than those of other great nations and are much less expensive. The American 126diplomatic service costs only one fourth as much as the British. Whether or not the result is desirable upon the whole you may judge for yourselves ”

“ The entertainments at the Embassy consisted chiefly of dinners, which were remarkable for their excellence, and invitations to which were highly prized by all sections of French society. Nothing, in fact, could exceed the dignity or the faultless taste of the Embassy arrangements, and not only were Lord Lyons's entertainments renowned, but his horses and carriages were, even in Paris, noticeably amongst the very best, it being one of his strongest convictions that the British representative should always make an imposing appearance. ”

“ On March 18, the insurgents were completely masters of the right bank of the Seine, and on the following day an emissary from the French Foreign Office appeared at the Embassy with the information that the Government had been forced to retire to Versailles, and that as it was no longer able to protect the Diplomatic Body at Paris, it was hoped that the Representatives of Foreign Powers would also repair to Versailles with the least possible delay. ”

“ In the meanwhile Lord Lyons's stay at Constantinople was drawing to a close, for at the end of April, Lord Stanley had offered him the Embassy at Paris. The offer was made in highly flattering terms, the Foreign Secretary expressing his regret at withdrawing the Ambassador from an important post, the duties of which he so thoroughly understood, but adding that Paris was the first place in the diplomatic service, and that the Eastern Question seemed likely [174] to be superseded by even more serious difficulties nearer home. ”

“ It is not that our Government is impecunious; it is only pennywise. Now for the first time in our history America has an embassy in London worthy of her greatness, thanks not to our Government, but to the princely munificence of her new Ambassador. Perhaps he will never know the impetus he has given to the lesser patriotism, nor with what innocent pride we have contemplated his residence from every point of view, and with what patriotic rapture we watched the erection of that splendid marquee destined for the welcome of his fellow-countrymen. ”

“ I explained to him that the President desired to raise the mission to an embassy, but as the law stood we were dependent upon the initiative of the Sultan. He said that during his incumbency as prime minister he had much to do with having the United States name an ambassador to London; he took special care that Great Britain should be the first nation to send an ambassador to Washington and to receive an American ambassador. ”

“ Yet in those sultry August days the war-cloud still hung over Europe and the representative of Her Majesty was compelled, as he ever is, to exercise the greatest tact and the utmost finesse in order to preserve peace with honour. Truly, the office of British Ambassador in Paris is no sinecure, for upon him rests much of the responsibility of England’s position in Europe and her prestige among nations, while to him is entrusted the difficult duty of negotiating amicably with a nation openly and avowedly hostile to British interests and British prosperity. ”

“ Though the big American bar was crowded by men, in the corner where they sat upon a red plush settee they could not be overheard, the chatter and noise being so great. “We at the Embassies are only puppets, after all. It is such men as you who shape the nation’s policy. We’re simply the survival of the old days when kings exchanged courtesies and views by means of their ambassadors, and we, the frills of the Embassy, merely dress up, dance attendance at every function, and pretend to an importance in the world which we certainly do not possess.” ”

“ It is not often that a diplomat forsakes diplomacy to take part in politics. An extraordinary combination of events, however, contrived to place me in a curious position, with the result that great influence was brought to bear on me to give up the Embassy of which I was in charge, and return to England to take up a minor position in the Cabinet. ”

“ The public have been long enough gulled by the false tinsel and glamour of the diplomatic world, and in these ultra-modern days they see the inutility of it all. Often an obscure Vice-Consul in an obscure port is of greater use to the nation than the whole of the red-taped, ceremonious Embassy, with its splendid house, its dinners and dances, its flunkeys and furbelows, and its flabby, do-nothing policy directed from Downing Street. ”