Frightening

Ambassadors and politicians and government officials and ministry clerks are smart, intelligent, far-seeing and perceptive --- and we can trust them to analyse events and developments and offer policy suggestions.

Correct?

Let's reconsider that with an historical example.

In February 1922, Edgar Vincent, 1st Viscount D'Abernon, from 1920 to 1925 D'Abernon the British Ambassador to Berlin, criticised the idea of a military alliance between Britain and France:

The fundamental criticism...is that England undertakes definite and very extensive responsibilities in order to avoid a danger which she believes to be largely imaginary. An armed attack by Germany on France within the next twenty-five years is admittedly improbable, an attack by Germany on England in the same period even more so...the whole tone of the French is to assume that the real danger to the future peace of Europe is military aggression by Germany.

On 9 February 1925 D'Abernon wrote that it was necessary

"to abandon the view that Germans are such congenital liars that there is no practical advantage in obtaining from them any engagement or declaration. On this assumption progress is impossible. Personally I regard the Germans as more reliable and more bound to written engagements than many other nations".

Frightening.

And today?

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