Page:The Practice of Diplomacy - Callières - Whyte - 1919.djvu/17

 trifle. And thus war will continue to be made until the great masses who are the sport of professional schemers say the word which shall bring, not eternal peace, for that is impossible, but a determination that wars shall be fought only in a just and righteous and vital cause' (The Times, 23rd November 1912). The justification of the growing demand for popular control of foreign policy could not be more succinctly put.

In the customary argument against diplomatic secrecy, however, there is some confusion of thought. It is against secret policies, in which the national liability may be unlimited, that the only genuine protest can be raised; for such policies are the very negation of democracy, and the denial of the most fundamental of all popular rights, namely, that the citizen shall know on what terms his country may ask him to lay down his life. But this justification of popular control does not presuppose the publication of diplomatic negotiations. On the contrary, it rests on the assumption that the People and Parliament will know where to draw the line between necessary control in matters of principle and the equally necessary discretionary freedom of the expert in negotiation. It follows, therefore, xi