Page:Paul Samuel Reinsch - Secret Diplomacy, How Far Can It Be Eliminated? - 1922.djvu/196



This survival is given strength by class inter- ests, pride of race, and by the manipulations of plutocratic control. Where affairs are handled by a narrow circle of men, no matter how high- minded and how thoroughly conscious of their public responsibility, yet with the necessary limi- tations of the human mind, they cannot but be influenced at every turn by the opinions of others with whom they are actually in contact; so that in decisions on these momentous matters, the thing which is concretely present is very often an interest comparatively narrow in itself, and related to the public welfare only by a series of remote inferences which are accepted at their face value. The most successful statesman of the nineteenth century said that the whole Balkan question was not worth the bones of one Pom- eranian grenadier; yet his successors in power risked the very existence of the nations of Europe for one phase of that question.

Powerful interests will always have means, for- mal or informal, to lay their needs and desires before the men in power. They may indeed be very important and may deserve special atten- tion, but unfortunately, many cases have hap- pened in which their point of view has been adopted without making sure that there existed a