refused to participate in the struggle.

I say for that reason because, having been accustomed to reading, all my
life, long diplomatic documents, really having been trained, you might
say, almost in the school of Ranke, who was the inaugurator of an
entirely new school of historical writing based on the criticism of
historical papers, I have come to realize that the dispatches of trained
diplomats are for the most part purely formal, and that while these
respective publications of Great Britain and of Germany have a certain
value, yet nevertheless the most important plans are laid in the
embrasures of windows, where important men stand and talk so that no one
can hear, or they are arranged and often times amplified in private
correspondence which does not see the light until years afterward, and
that the most important historical documents are found in the archives
of families, members of which have been the guiding spirits of European
policy and politics.

So that what the secret diplomacy of the last years may have been is as
yet utterly unknown, and certainly will not be known for the generation
yet to come and perhaps for several generations. The student in almost
any European capital is given complete access to everything on file in
the archives, including secret documents, only down to a certain date.
That date differs in various of these storehouses, but I think in no
case is it later than 1830.

If you ask why, there are the sensibilities of families to be
considered, there is the question of hidden policies which they do not
care to reveal, and then there is the whole matter of who the examining
student is. For instance, certain very important papers were absolutely
denied to me, as an American, in Great Britain--or at least excuses were
made if they were not absolutely denied--which were opened to an
Englishman who was working upon the same subject at about the same time.

The reason for such observations at the present hour is plain enough.
Public opinion is formed upon what the public is permitted to know, and
is not formed upon the actual facts which the public is not permitted to
know. And for that reason Americans, remote as we are from the sources
of information, and especially remote from that most delicate of all
indications, the pulse of public opinion in foreign countries, ought to
be extremely slow to commit themselves to anything.

Attack on Sir Edward Grey.

Now, we have just had a very i