I say for that reason because, having been accustomed to reading, all my
life, long diplomatic documents, really having been trained, you might
say, almost in the school of Ranke, who was the inaugurator of an
entirely new school of historical writing based on the criticism of
historical papers, I have come to realize that the dispatches of trained
diplomats are for the most part purely formal, and that while these
respective publications of Great Britain and of Germany have a certain
value, yet nevertheless the most important plans are laid in the
embrasures of windows, where important men stand and talk so that no one
can hear, or they are arranged and often times amplified in private
correspondence which does not see the light until years afterward, and
that the most important historical documents are found in the archives
of families, members of which have been the guiding spirits of European
policy and politics.
So that what the secret diplomacy of the last years may have been is as
yet utterly unknown, and certainly will not be known for the generation
yet to come and perhaps for several generations.
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