It is an indicator of the great changes taking place in international relations that a general agreement is emerging that the problems posed by crazy religions, greedy firms and rogue states alike would be greatly alleviated by more and better public diplomacy. What the democratic and nationalist revolutions of the nineteenth century made it possible to conceive – peoples directly involved in international political life – the twentieth-century revolutions in the technologies of transportation and communication, it is argued, have enacted. Simonds and Emeny's claim that “diplomacy has largely lost its importance … as a consequence of the progressive march of people to political power, on the one hand, and the consequent growth of the system of international conference on the other” was clearly premature when they made it in 1935. Such a claim if made today would not sound premature, but what it meant and what it entailed would be just as unclear as they were over seventy years ago. Now, as then, we remain unsure about what is meant by people, the people and, especially, the public when we talk about diplomacy and international relations. Who are the public in public diplomacy? Are they the people of a country and, if so, must it be all of them or can it be some of them?