Page:Paul Samuel Reinsch - Secret Diplomacy, How Far Can It Be Eliminated? - 1922.djvu/198



The artful contrivance and harsh, ruthless exe- cution of many of his plans left a heritage of evil to the world; but the greatest evil lay in the ex- ample given by so successful a man in making it seem that history could actually thus be made. The attitude which is taken in behalf of such men, in claiming for them a completely free and full discretion in controlling foreign affairs, recalls a statement made by H. G. Wells concerning a Brit- ish leader: "He believes that he belongs to a particularly gifted and privileged class of beings to whom the lives and affairs of common men are given over the raw material for brilliant careers. It seems to him an act of insolence that the com- mon man should form judgments on matters of statecraft." The diplomats of the old school in- deed do require the people, but only as material with which to work out their grandiose projects. Their view not too distantly resembles that of the German militarists to whom ordinary humanity existed only for one purpose, "to do their damn'd duty."

We should naturally expect to find the great- est secrecy and the most callous use of secretive methods, where absolutism remains most com- pletely established. In the last remaining abso- lutism, that of Japan, these expectations