Page:Paul Samuel Reinsch - Secret Diplomacy, How Far Can It Be Eliminated? - 1922.djvu/189



tainly true that questions of peace and war have never definitely been reasoned out on that basis. There has always been the assumption that cer- tain things were essential to national prestige and could not be questioned; it is only when the actually existing broader base of national political life is organized also for active control of foreign affairs, that these considerations will have their full weight. Only the most exceptional states- men could lift themselves out of the narrow groove of tradition and precedent; and more ex- ceptional still, in fact all but impossible, is the capacity of one man to represent in himself in just proportion, all the interests and feelings of a nation.

Infallibility cannot be expected in the handling of foreign affairs, whether under a broad discre- tion of statesmen or under strict democratic con- trol. There will always be an alternative of wis- dom and rashness, constructive planning and headlong action, carefulness and negligence. But past experience has certainly established beyond peradventure of doubt that secret diplomacy is not infallible, and particularly that diplomacy acting under absolutist traditions, as in Germany before the war, may make the most fatal mistakes of judgment and of policy. Balfour said: "I