Then, while the diplomatists of Continental Powers are chosen for their ability in the first place, the title coming to them afterwards if necessary, Britain's diplomatic service is recruited largely among a class whose sole claim to appointment is that they are aristocrats. M. Vambery of course argues from the mental standpoint of a foreigner, and he does not attach sufficient importance to the doctrine of noblesse oblige which governs the actions of the British aristocracy and which places trust and honour before all things. But he is right when he says that the Continental diplomatists, chosen for their pliability ¨C perhaps for the known unscrupulousness ¨C rather than for the birth and position, are more than a match for the British noble, who carries his traditions and his prejudices and his stiffness to the nethermost parts of the earth.
According to M. Vambery, the class of diplomatists needed by Britain in the East are not dandies and lordlings, but pliable men who understand Asiatics, and who will leave their West End manners behind them in London, Vienna, St. Petersburg, or Paris. To some extent this need is being tardily realised, for the appointment of Sir Claude Macdonald to Peking was made over the heads of many older and titled diplomatists. But there is yet much to do in the way of reform; for M. Vambery is right when he asserts that the British know very little of the three hundred millions and more of Asiatics who acknowledge their sway or influence. It is true that those who enter the Indian Civil Service are supposed to learn the languages of Indian; but outside of India the knowledge of Eastern languages among the British officials and others is best expressed by the irreducible minimum.
On the other hand, in each Continental capital there are schools of Eastern languages, and all who would enter the diplomatic service must graduate in them. Finally, M. Vambery implores England to look fairly in the face the matter of her prestige in the East, and the danger that threatens there; and he denounces her present policy as "ostrich-like." The coaxing and flattering of Russia must cease ¨C for there can be no truce with the Bear. Britain and British may be too honest, too blunt, too straightforward, to cope with Continental diplomacy in the East. But England has won her way in the past and established her wide empire by dint of manliness and virile force; and the time is fast coming when that manliness and force may be the only means left to secure the reassertion of British rights and British prestige.
Read Part 1
From a 19th century newspaper
Vambery on England in the Orient 1
Vambery on England in the Orient 2
Vambery - Travels in Central Asia
The Expulsion of Count Tolstoi
Travels in Central Asia, by Arminius Vambery
Vambery and Count Dracula
Vambery - Sketches of Central Asia
The Imperial Family of Russia
An American in Turkistan
Global Disarmament - Russia and America
World disasters - The year of 1898
Japanese priest crosses desert to
First Japanese Buddhist Temple in America
Tibet
World Disasters: Air, Sea and Space
World Disasters Report 2002
World Disasters
World Disasters timeline
General Sir Archibald Hunter
Russian names in English
