Hostname: page-component-6898cfcb55-zsp5v Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2026-11-11T18:54:19.310Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

III. Peacemaking, Old And New

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  20 December 2011

Get access

Extract

Anotion seems to be gaining currency that the methods of diplomacy as now pursued differ in some way from those of what may be called the Victorian period. It has perhaps arisen from the first of President Wilson's Fourteen Points of January 8, 1918, as constituting the only possible programme for giving peace to the world, set forth in these words: “Open covenants of peace openly arrived at, after which there shall be no private international undertakings of any kind, but diplomacy shall proceed always frankly and in the public view.” The Fourteen Points were accepted by both Germany and the Allies and Associated Powers of the Entente as “the necessary terms of such an armistice as would fully protect the interest of the peoples involved and ensure to the associated Governments the unrestricted power to safeguard and enforce the details of the peace to which the German Government had agreed”. And it has been rather hastily assumed that this agreement had put an end to the secret diplomacy which hitherto had distorted the policy of the European Allies. A paper read by Sir Maurice Hankey before the British Institute of International Affairs on November 2, 1920, confirmed the view that diplomacy by conference between the principal Ministers of the Powers concerned has to an important extent superseded the old way of conducting international relations through professional diplomatists accredited by the governments concerned, and that this change was brought about by the World War.

Information

Type
Research Article
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1925

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Article purchase

Temporarily unavailable