Carnock, Conference and Curzon

Extract

Mr. Harold Nicholson has completed his great trilogy, thus concluding his survey of the diplomatic history of Great Britain from approximately the end of ‘Splendid Isolation’ to the death of Lord Curzon. And there has happened to Mr. Nicholson what has happened to other historians; in compiling an account he has unpremeditatedly formulated an indictment. He has focussed his lens delicately upon the clear-cut and aristocratic figure of Diplomacy, but the developed plate has revealed in the background and in the very act of sabotage the hulking and murderous figure of Democracy.

There are many counts upon which to praise Mr. Nicholson. He is an admirer of the modern and obscure method of prose writing, but his own style is limpid and traditional. The Supreme Council overworked him at Paris in 1919 because of his ability in drafting, and we reap the benefit of that ability in his concise précis of situations, protocols, treaties, crises and historic passages, précis which are clear, logical and full, and easier to read than many novels. Most of his historic estimates are not assailable. His narrative of Conferences and correspondences is broken by some of the most brilliant pen-sketches of places and personalities that our generation has produced—the meeting of Edward VII and the Czar at Reval, for instance, the Allied Mission to Bela Kun in 1919, Lord Curzon at Lausanne (a portrait which should be supplemented by his sketch of Arketall in Some People). His epithets and phrases enclose large and precise ideas, his knowledge of Europe and its working make the reading of his volumes almost an education in affairs.