Page:Paul Samuel Reinsch - Secret Diplomacy, How Far Can It Be Eliminated? - 1922.djvu/36

 among individuals in that society, all action was dominated by the constantly overhanging hazard of private duel, bringing into life something of the keenness and cruelty of the tempered blade; so among nations warlike rivalry inspired all political action. War was either going on or impending and being prepared for; humanity was living true to the old adage: "Man a wolf to man."

Diplomacy was personal in that the ambassador was held to be an alter ego of the monarch. It was surrounded with the glamor of high state and important enterprise, and inspired with a great pride of office. The fact that he represented absolute power in its contact with the absolute power of others, gave the diplomat a sense of high importance. The monarchs, themselves, were generally governed by personal motives and considerations. They looked upon politics as a keen game for personal or family power in which populations of subjects, territory, and war indemnities were the stakes, and human lives the pawns; the highest happiness and good fortune of the subject was supposed to be the right to die for his king. The diplomatic representatives quite naturally fell into the same way of regarding affairs of state from the viewpoint of political