Evening Republican, Volume 22, Number 49, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 27 February 1919 — CANNOT RANK AS DIPLOMAT [ARTICLE]

CANNOT RANK AS DIPLOMAT

General Smuts Disqualified Himself by His Unseemly Employment of Plain Language. The language of the law is the most formal in the world and the most precise. It seeks the definite so ardently that, with its repetitions and whereases, it confuses its own message and only that rather perverted form of intellect, the legal mind, can wind through its labyrinthine verbiage. The language of diplomacy, borrowing something of formality from the law, Is nevertheless far more dignified. The law deals merely with estates and private contracts. It decrees the fate of the individual. But the fate of nations may hang on the phraseology of diplomacy. Its greater importance has

imparted to its diction greater dignity. And the purpose of words in diplomatic exchanges being to conceal thought, as Talleyrand said, the language of chancelleries is far more liquid. It must fit the cast of the particular die into which it is poured. So we must conclude that General Smuts is hot a diplomat. He has not the diplomatic method of expression. When the general met a diplomat, trained in the school of Metternich, to discuss informally a separate peace with Austria, he put the question of such a peace squarely to the beribboned, bestarred representative. There was hesitation and equivocation. “Gbod-riight I” was the getieral’s exclamation as he left the confused diplomat. General Smuts may not wear shirt sleeves in diplomatic councils, but this use of the vernacular shows that his verbiage at least takes its coat f'he acid touch of a bit of slang put an end to the prolonged ambiguities and deceits of which diplomacy is so fond.