Page:A hundred years hence - the expectations of an optimist (IA hundredyearshenc00russrich).pdf/283

 and who would quite possibly hesitate before smuggling a box of cigars through the custom-house, will calmly advocate acts of international dishonesty and oppression abhorrent to any conscientious mind.

There can be no doubt that the most deleterious influence of our times, which encourages nations to delay and deny to each other justice and the fulfilment of solemn obligations, is the habit of waiting upon the chances of a minister's fall, and a resulting change of policy. So long as almost any day may bring a new set of statesmen, predisposed against anything which their predecessors may have approved, diplomacy will be disfigured by ways that are dark and tricks that are vain: and the logical twentieth of the centuries may be trusted to perceive this. Consequently some method will have to be devised by which a continuous foreign policy may be made compatible with the performance of a nation's will. And here the wiser nature of the new age will assist the constructive genius of the reformer. No doubt the habit of changing our minds on the basic principles of government about once every six years will have been eradicated. Peoples will deliberate more intelligently upon the important questions which they decide by their votes: and it will no longer be thought—or rather, we shall no longer act as if we thought—that a modifica-