Foreign Secretary

“ Foreign policy had happily been kept outside party, the Government accepting the policy of its predecessors. The Foreign Secretary should take the House and the people more into his confidence, to ensure that they should be united in a great emergency, and should give a reasoned review of the position in relation to the affairs of the world such as that accorded by the Foreign Ministers of other Great States to Parliaments to which they were less responsible than the British Foreign Secretary was to that of Great Britain. ”

“ Yet a man has only to read the British White Paper--he need not, indeed, do much except read Sir Edward Grey's dispatches to his ambassadors on July 29, 1914--to realize that the Foreign Secretary is a statesman of marvelous force and capacity to grapple with the essentials of a situation. ”

“ That the Secretary for the Department of Foreign Affairs correspond with the Governors or Presidents of all, or any of the United States, affording them such information from his department as may be useful to their States or to the United States, stating complaints that may have been urged against the government of any of the said States, or the subjects thereof, by the subjects of foreign powers, so that justice may be done agreeably to the laws of such state, or the charge proved to be groundless, and the honor of the government vindicated. ”

“ I was sure then that the thing I had to get for the British Foreign Secretary must be there, though it was such a new thing that it couldn’t have been anywhere for long. ‘There are three keys to that safe,’ said Raoul. ‘One is kept by the President; one is always with the Foreign Secretary; this is the third’; and he showed me a strange little key different to any I had seen before. ‘Oh, do let me have a peep at these wonderful papers,’ I pleaded with him. ”

“ Is it not made expressly the duty of the secretary of foreign affairs to obey such orders as shall be given to him by the President? And would you keep in office a man who should refuse or neglect to do the duties assigned him? Is not the President responsible for the administration? ”

“ If we were asked to point to an illustration of the normal advice uttered for the general conduct of the weighty matters of international policy, we might instance the words of Palmerston to Malmesbury when the latter became Foreign Secretary. After warning him very impressively of the power which this country owes to her prestige, he continued: 'All the Foreign Ministers will try at first to get objects which they have been refused by successive Governments; so take care you yield nothing until you have well looked into every side of the question. ”

“ If I ask the Home Secretary, he declares that the people are too obstinate to understand what comfortable places the workhouses are;—if I ask the Colonial Secretary, he assures me that the people are most wilfully blind to the blessings of emigration: if I ask the Foreign Secretary, he labours to convince me that the distracted state of the East reacts upon this country ”

“ Both in committee and on report the estimates for the separate departments are taken in succession, In committee there is usually a considerable debate on the Foreign Office estimates, and confidential communications are made by the Imperial Chancellor, or more usually the Foreign Secretary, and if necessary by Foreign Office officials, On report also there is often a fairly long debate on the Foreign Office estimates, in which the Imperial Chancellor generally takes part. Foreign questions appear to be seldom raised on the third reading of the estimates. ”

“ To be Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs to the greatest power which the world had as yet known must certainly seem, on paper, to be as brilliant a post as a man’s ambition could covet. Many years ago it had seemed so to Bransome himself. ”

“ The Secretary is not merely a minister for foreign affairs, but is the guardian of the seals of state, the medium through whom the laws are promulgated, the depositary of the government archives, and the first assistant of the Chief Executive. Tradition has conferred upon him a dignity next to that of President, the law making him second in the order of succession to the presidency by vacancy of the office, while it has become the custom for the President to invite him to participate in the performance of his duties rather as a colleague and associate than as an adviser and servant. ”

“ Candidates for the British diplomatic service require a nomination from the Foreign Secretary, must be between the ages of nineteen and twenty-five, are subjected to an examination, and are almost invariably young men of good birth and position. ”

“ In writing thus, the figure of another Secretariat official rises before me with reproachful looks. I see the thought-worn face of that Secretary to whom the Rajas belong, and who is, in every particular, a striking contrast with the typical person whose portrait I sketch. The Secretary in the Foreign Department is a scholar and a man of letters by instinct. Whatever he writes is something more than correct and precise—it is impressed with the sweep and cadence of the sea ”

“ The secretary of foreign affairs will only be established for the time being as the centre of diplomacy, which will embrace two sections. First. On the correspondence and formation of the diplomatic corps, secretary, and interpreters. Second. The means or methods that shall be adopted with reference to the press. For the time being, centres of marine and commerce will not be established, but in their place a section charged with all despatches concerning the expeditions for the purchase of arms and provisions and other duties belonging to said branches. ”

“ The Secretary-General of the Council, High Representative for the common foreign and security policy, shall assist the Council in matters coming within the scope of the common foreign and security policy, in particular through contributing to the formulation, preparation and implementation of policy decisions, and, when appropriate and acting on behalf of the Council at the request of the Presidency, through conducting political dialogue with third parties. ”

“ Diplomatic Efforts. The Secretary of State shall expeditiously pursue and direct such negotiations and diplomatic efforts with foreign governments as are necessary and appropriate to implement this order. ”

“ The members of the Cabinet do not seem to have the habit of frankness with one another. Each lives and works in a water-tight compartment. I sat at luncheon (at a hotel) with Lansing, Secretary of State; Lane, Secretary of the Interior; Gregory, Attorney-General; Baker, Secretary of War; Daniels, Secretary of the Navy; and Sharp, Ambassador to France; and all the talk was jocular or semi-jocular, and personal—mere cheap chaff. Not a question was asked either of the Ambassador to France or of the Ambassador to Great Britain about the war or about our foreign relations. ”

“ Since only political events in which Lady John was herself deeply interested or those which affected her life through her husband's career are here to the purpose, the other international difficulties with which Lord John had to deal as Secretary for Foreign Affairs in this Government may be quickly passed over. ”

“ The Secretary General shall be appointed by the Council of Heads of State and Government, following a proposal by the Council of Ministers of Foreign Affairs, for a term of two years, renewable only once. The Secretary General shall not be succeeded by a person of the same nationality. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Moreover, the gravity of his aspect and the solemn inflection of his voice, would have compelled Members to listen to the end of the recitation with a sort of dim consciousness that they were really being informed as to the details of an understanding come to between Her majesty's Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs, and the Governments of Germany and Italy. ”

“ Surely you know my nature well enough? You know how fully occupied I am as Under-Secretary, and that my presence here from time to time has scarcely been in harmony with my duties at the Foreign Office and in the House. I have little leisure; and I do not possess that inclination for amourettes which somehow appears to seize half the legislators sent to Westminster. ”

“ The manner in which Sir Henry Lygon’s despatches had leaked out to England’s enemies was a puzzle to the Foreign Office and to the world; but as I possessed the entire confidence of my chief I remained unsuspected, although my treachery had cost the country dearly, for by it I had betrayed my benefactor, Lord Stockbridge, and given to the wily Turk the whip hand over Europe, enabling the Sultan to defy both England and Russia. England had held the trump card in the diplomatic game, but by the premature exposure of her hand all had been lost. ”

“ Stephen’s men collected in groups, talked anxiously, and awaited the doom of the Government; for the political horizon was black, and the storm, long threatened, was now to burst. Contrary to the usual course of things, the small band of Irish obstructionists, fluent orators, whose heckling of Ministers caused so many scenes, were silent, for a matter of foreign policy of the most vital importance had been debated ever since the dinner-hour. ”

“ Man, let him love as he may, has an existence which lies outside the orbit of his affections. He has his worldly interests, his public character, his ambition, his competition with other men—but the woman of noble mind centres all in that one feeling of affection.”
“Really?” She laughed flippantly, toying with her bracelets. “This is a most erudite discourse. It would no doubt edify the House if one night you introduced the subject of love. You’ve grown of late to be quite a philosopher, my dear Dudley. Politics and that horrid old Foreign Office have entirely spoilt you.” ”

“ The procedure for maintaining confidential information in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and foreign missions shall be approved by the Minister of Foreign Affairs.
§ 34. Official travel
Diplomats are required to accept an assignment to a foreign mission of up to one month if they are informed thereof at least three days in advance. With the agreement of the diplomat, the Permanent Under-Secretary may extend the length of the assignment by up to three months. ”

“ Anyone who had held, during the four most difficult years of American diplomacy, a position at the centre of action, with his hands actually touching the lever of power, could not beg a post of Secretary at Vienna or Madrid in order to bore himself doing nothing until the next President should do him the honor to turn him out. ”

“ When the Union has defined a position on a subject which is on the United Nations Security Council agenda, those Member States which sit on the Security Council shall request that the Union Minister for Foreign Affairs be asked to present the Union's position. ”

“ A Foreign Office and a Diplomatic Service are great instruments for preventing, as far as can be prevented, and diminishing, even when you cannot prevent, friction between States which are, or which ought to be, friendly. ”

“ The presence among us of the eminent statesman, the Secretary of State of the United States, is indeed of great significance and surpassing importance in the course of our political life, as a singular and unmistakable token of friendship offered by that powerful republic, and as a generous effort to create between the nations of America a stable régime of true understanding and concord. ”

“ New questions and discussions may indeed turn up, but the principal obstacles to a friendly correspondence being removed, the easy duties of this legation will hardly render the constant presence of a Plenipotentiary indispensable, especially as we possess a Secretary who joins a large diplomatic experience to a high order of ability, who has always been regarded by me less as a subordinate than as a co-laborer, and who, as I know, justly enjoys the full confidence of the Secretary of State. ”

“ These diplomatic agents are appointees of the executive. Official communications with the president are made through the secretary of state. "In all negotiations between nations, sovereign should always speak to sovereign and minister to minister."
A country may decline to receive any ambassador from a certain nation ”

“ If we do not by our actions give the lie direct to all this tittle-tattle, then an open scandal must result. Surely if we, by mutual consent, remain apart, we may still remain in bon accord?”
“But you are mine, Dudley!” she cried, again throwing her snowy, half-bare arms around his neck and kissing him passionately.
“Then since you hold me in such esteem, why not act in my interests?” he asked, for in argument he was as shrewd as a man could possibly be, and had passed with honours through that school of finesse, the Foreign Office. ”

“ Chisholm was thankful, for he was uneasy, and feared that his face might betray him to that keen and practised statesman beneath whose calm gaze many a diplomatist, whether British or foreign, had so often trembled. ”

“ I should state that we have suggested to the Turkish government to buy them; but you can easily settle that matter with the Turks. . . . .
The hilarity of the secretaries in Portland Place would have been loud had they seen this letter and realised the muddle of difficulties into which Earl Russell had at last thrown himself under the impulse of the American Minister; but, nevertheless, these letters upset from top to bottom the results of the private secretary's diplomatic education forty years after he had supposed it complete. ”