nd determine
the life of peoples.

At present the statesmen do not realise this sufficiently, and hence comes
much futile and aimless talking and writing among politicians who fancy
that what they say or write to each other in their studies can determine
the course of the world. In order to enable diplomatists to discharge all
the duties we have already enumerated under the heading of "the estimation
of national forces," they need to have a better training and a fuller
knowledge of the life and social movements both of their own country and
of foreign countries. The Royal Commission on the Civil Service was still
considering, when war broke out, how this could be accomplished. It is too
long a question to enter on here, but it may safely be said that the more
the problem is examined the more does it appear to be, like the wider
problem of the whole body of 200,000 civil servants in the United Kingdom,
a question of national education, and not a mere matter of Government
regulations and democratic institutions. What is required, in the Foreign
Office, as in the whole British civil service, has been well expressed by
Mr. Graham Wallas in his book _Human Nature in Politics_:

"However able our officials are and however varied their origin, the danger
of the narrowness and rigidity which has hitherto so generally resulted
from official life would still remain and must be guarded against by every
kind of encouragement to free intellectual development."

Sec.3. _Foreign Policy and Education_.--But if statesmen do not sufficiently
realise the strength of existing popular forces in foreign policy, it is
equally true that the people themselves do not realise it. The people of
every country are inclined to think that they can alter the destiny of
nations by ousting one foreign minister from power and setting up another;
they think that speeches and the resolutions passed by congresses can
change fundamental economic facts. They think that mere expressions of
mutual goodwill can take the place of knowledge, and they forget that no
nation can shake itself free in a moment from the historical development
which has formed it, just as no man can wholly shake himself free from
the character which he has inherited from his ancestors. Indeed all our
phrases--our whole attitude of mind--shows how little we, as a people,
realise popular forces. We commonly speak, for instance, of Russia as if
nothing in that vast country had any influ