G. R. Searle on Robert Gascoyne-Cecil, 3rd Marquess of Salisbury

“He took over the Foreign Office in January 1887... Salisbury quickly restored Britain's prestige, earning the grudging respect even of Bismarck, who found him a wily and elusive negotiator.”

“Calm, sardonic, and pessimistic, Salisbury in many ways matched the spirit of the times. He did not, like Gladstone, assert the importance of moral principle in international life. His objective, in an increasingly dangerous world, was to protect essential British interests (the defence of the Raj against Russian incursions and the protection of the sea lanes to India through the Suez Canal and through the longer route via South Africa across the Indian Ocean), but to do so by preserving the peace and thus minimizing expenditure in the cause of domestic stability. To this difficult task Salisbury brought two great diplomatic skills. He clearly saw the interconnections between imperial issues and shifts in the European power game; and he showed a remarkable aptitude for isolating whichever foreign power happened, at any moment, to be Britain's principal enemy.”