Page:Diplomacy and the Study of International Relations (1919).djvu/193

 British foreign policy during the nineteenth century, and in the exposition of policy 'from the eve of the French Revolution' the author has 'called in aid the actual words, written or spoken, of the leading statesmen and diplomatists who were responsible' for its conduct.

2. The Cambridge Modern History, vols. xi and xii, and The Political History of England, vol. xii; Lavisse and Rambaud, Histoire générale, vol. xii.

'In earlier volumes the attempt has been made to show the shifting from time to time of the centre of gravity in Europe. From about 1660 to 1870 that centre of gravity was undoubtedly in Paris. Since 1871 France, though still in the forefront of European culture, has lost something of her pride of place. The centre of European politics proper has been at Berlin; the centre of world-politics, which are also European politics in the larger sense, has been in London. And it is not by accident that the Hague, midway between London and Berlin and nearly equidistant from Paris, has been chosen as the meeting-ground of European Councils. Whether the coming generation sees the centre of world-politics transferred from London to Washington depends on various contingencies; among others on the policy adopted by Great Britain towards her self-governing Colonies, and on the degree of interest which the United States may come to take in matters outside their own boundaries. Up to the present, the United States have taken no share in European politics, little in world-politics; but the Spanish War and the annexation of the Philippines have introduced a change.'