my very dear young diplomatist,

my life-long friendship with your father the old diplomatist, must excuse me for the liberty i am now taking.

i am infinitely concerned that your career should be a successful one and that before you perish of senile decay you should have held the position of ambassador in at least three great capitals of europe. you certainly will not attain to such eminence unless you are early instructed by some competent authority in the mysteries of your trade, and as i am singularly well placed for giving you private information upon these, i shall immediately proceed to do so.

i beg you to remember at the very outset of your responsible profession what destinies will lie in your hands. the lives of countless [pg 2]innocent men will depend upon your judgment and upon your provocation or restraint of some great war. the principal fortunes of our time will be largely dependent upon your decisions and will always fluctuate according to the advice you may give your government. more important still, the honour of your country and its splendour before the world will hang upon your good sense and foresight. weigh, therefore, i beg of you, before you undertake so high a function, its duties and its perils, and all that you may have to answer for at the last day, if indeed (as so many still pretend) human beings are answerable in the long run for the good or evil they have done upon earth. do not, however, be deterred by any shirking of consequences, or by what tennyson has well called "craven fears of being great" from the tremendous task which your noble calling involves. some one must undertake it, and why not you? having well balanced in your mind these major things, next note carefully, i beg of you, the rules i am about to lay down.

[pg 3]

the first of these is that you shall possess yourself of an income of not less than $2,000 a year. you will immediately protest, and with justice, that it is impossible upon such a revenue to impress the nobility of austria, of russia, or even of montenegro, with those qualities which invariably accompany great wealth; but your objection is a youthful and improvident one. you will not be required at this outset of your activities to dazzle by any lavish expenditure the luxurious courts of the countries i have just named. you are too young to be entrusted with any such duty and at the most it will be incumbent upon you to expend no more upon appearances than what is necessary for making a decent show at the dinner table of others. it is true that from time to time you will have to entertain at a meal, and at your own charges, a journalist perhaps or even a traveller, but from a narrow and cautious observation of some several hundred instances i have discovered that of an average of two hundred meals consumed by young diplomatists in the space of a year[pg 4] at places of public resort, no more than 83 at the most, nor less than 51 at the least, were a burden upon their purses. and by management of the simplest sort you can enjoy the hospitality of others at least three times as often as you are compelled to extend it yourself. moreover, you will have this great advantage, that you will know the habits of the capital in which you reside and can give your guest the impression of having dined well amid luxurious surroundings, although as a matter of fact he shall have dined exceedingly ill amid surroundings which i tremble to remember: for i also have been in arcadia.

if i have set down such a figure as $2,000 it is merely because that sum has been decided upon by those experts in the profound art of international politics who determine the minimum for the court of st. james.

let us leave this sordid matter and consider next the higher part of your mission, in which connection i will first speak of what your clothing and demeanour should be.

[pg 5]

it is not true that the presence of a crease clearly emphasised down the front of each trouser leg is a necessity or even an advantage to the conduct of world-wide affairs. upon the contrary, i have come to the settled conclusion after no little review of the matter that a mere hint at such a line is not only sufficient, but preferable to any emphasis of it.

you may object to me that the eminent man who advised and all but carried out the occupation of the south pole by the troops of monomotapa six years ago, stretched his trousers in a machine every night, or, to speak more accurately, ordered his valet under pain of death to provide that detail. it is true. but it was not because of, it was in spite of, this habit that the baron brought his pigs to market, and annexed to the dominion of his sovereign those regions which were abandoned the next year with the utmost precipitation.

i yield to no one in my admiration of his amazing subtlety and comprehensive coup d'œil; but i have it upon unimpeachable [pg 6]testimony that the too great rigidity of his garments formed, until the very last moment, an obstacle to the success of his plans. i give it to you, therefore, as a general rule, that you should do no more than put the trousers upon a table, and pass your hand lightly over them before putting them on; in this way you will produce such a crease as will suggest, and no more than suggest, the feature upon which i have detained you in this paragraph.

more important even than your garments will be your method of address and in particular your conversation with women. here i can only give you the advice which i fear may seem somewhat general and vague, that you should never neglect upon the one hand to engage in a dialogue of some sort, nor venture, upon the other, to be drawn into a violent altercation.

thus, if it be your good fortune (as it was once mine) to sit upon a marble terrace overlooking the mediterranean sea, and there drink a chianti of that sort which the french call[pg 7] "iron filings" accompanied by the flesh of goats, it would be noted disastrously against you if you refused during the whole course of the meal to utter a word to the lady upon your left or to the lady upon your right. but it will advance you in no way if at the second course you allow your ungovernable temper to become your master, and to tell either of these flanking parties what you thought of them in the heat of the moment. any attempt to retrieve your position after such an excess by loud appeals to the justice of your cause would but degrade you further in the eyes of your chief, and you might look in vain during all succeeding years for an appointment to the conduct of important and delicate negotiations between any two great powers. no: under such circumstances (to take a concrete instance) don't mention trivial things of literature or of the weather, but discover something novel in the aspect of the sea, or recite for the advantage of the company (but at intervals of not less than five minutes) some terse falsehood that[pg 8] may have occurred to you, and preferably one damaging to the moral character of an innocent man.

never contradict any statement whatsoever that may be made in your presence, at least in public. nor, upon your part, make any affirmation which might lead to a contradiction but, after waiting until you have heard an expression of opinion from that person whom you would address, agree with it, differing only in just so much as will lend salt to the remainder of the delightful interchange. let it appear in all you say that you are at once more learned than those about you, and yet believe them to be more learned than yourself. when you allude to the great never do so in terms of familiarity, even if the great be your own uncle, but rather in terms of distant admiration or of still more distant contempt. above all—this i most urgently charge you—confess in the most open manner a complete ignorance of how money is made, whether honourably or dishonourably. this last precept is the[pg 9] more difficult to fulfil when you consider that in the high-bred world of european gentlemen in which you will find yourself, money is very nearly the sole subject of discourse.

there remains to be dealt with the last exercise whereby some important mission confided to you may be brought to an issue.

i will suppose that a cautious government is making an experiment of your abilities and has despatched you for the negotiation of a commercial treaty with the viceroy of seringapatam: a very usual test for the judging of a man's capacities.

you will, during the weeks in which sundry varlets draft letters, exchange views, consider schedules, and argue tariffs, make it your particular care to visit his excellency and his excellency's wife, to play tennis with his excellency's daughters once or twice, but more certainly to pursue in company with his excellency's sons some animal which may be killed without any serious risk.

when the preliminaries of the treaty have[pg 10] been agreed to and the moment has come for fixing your signature thereto, it is in the essence of good breeding that you should perform the act quite simply with some ordinary pen, such for instance as the fountain pen which you carry in your pocket, and i need hardly say that jokes framed for the occasion, or any flippancy of demeanour during the solemnity would be in equally bad taste. you shall (if my memory of many such occasions serves me right) spread your left hand (which you will previously have washed very carefully) outwards over the paper, arch your eyebrows somewhat, say to your salaried friend, "where do i sign?" and then quickly put down your name in the place indicated, and that in a very ordinary manner. these are the little things that betray not only the gentleman but the arbiter of the world's destinies.

space forbids me to deal with the minor matters of religion, affection and morals. i only beg you to keep all three under a severe restraint, and in particular the first, too great a[pg 11] zeal in which has early ruined many a rising young fellow.

good-bye, my dear young diplomatist. if they send you to paris ask for berlin; and if they send you to berlin kill yourself.

i am, in fond remembrance of your father,

your devoted friend,

h. belloc.