374 DIPLOMACY 



international relations, embracing its laws, usages, privileges, and 

 obligations, is the result of past diplomatic activity. 



If, therefore, the diplomatist is deeply indebted to the historian 

 and would gladly increase his indebtedness, his guild is prepared to 

 make a rich return in compensation. It is from his archives that 

 the most precious and trustworthy materials of history are to be 

 derived. It is his dispatches that explain the origin and causes of 

 every war and the terms and conditions of every peace. It is in 

 the correspondence and records of his government and in the details 

 of his letters, memoirs, and reminiscences that the whole psychology 

 of international policy must be sought. 



A new type of history came into being when Von Ranke in Ger- 

 many and Mignet in France turned their attention to unused diplo- 

 matic sources. For fifty years past, innumerable scholars have ran- 

 sacked the archives of the European governments, gathering a rich 

 harvest of data and documents relating to special questions; and 

 thus, at last, international events, studied from many angles of 

 observation, as from a multitude of photographs, begin to assume 

 their just proportions. On some future day, when the scientific 

 historian has made full use of this authentic material, a mirror will be 

 held up to nature, in which not only the diplomatist may perceive 

 the lessons of past negotiations, but citizens of once opposing na- 

 tionalities may discern the true merits of great controversies, so 

 easily distorted by patriotic pride and popular tradition. Every 

 such revelation, by diminishing the role of passion and prejudice, 

 will narrow the chasm which separates peoples, by enabling them to 

 discover that in their most bitter contentions there were two sides 

 where they have beea accustomed to see but one. 



Passing over a multitude of instances, a single example may serve 

 to illustrate what remains to be accomplished in the vast and fertile 

 field of diplomatic history. Toward the close of his reign, his 

 Holiness, the late Pope Leo XIII, opened to the use of historical 

 scholars the secret Archives of the Vatican. Thus, for the first time, 

 were presented to the scrutiny of the historian the records and corre- 

 spondence of the most ancient international institution in the world. 

 The reports of the papal nuncios alone fill more than four thousand 

 volumes, divided into twenty-one groups, according to the places 

 from which they were written. There are, besides, letters of import- 

 ance covering centuries of intercourse by kings, princes, cardinals, 

 bishops, and eminent individuals. 



The labor bestowed upon this rich collection of documents has 

 already borne precious fruits, but a vast proportion of its contents 

 still remains to be explored. The Austrian and Prussian Institutes 

 have published a part of the reports of the nuncios emanating from 

 Germany, but the great mass of these reports still remains untouched. 



