otnote 5: See below, Chapter IV, Sec. 4. _Nationalism True and False_.]

Sec. 9

The Convenience of Diplomacy

As a matter of fact this original wolfish attitude of nations is already
obsolete, if it ever existed. The expansion and growth of political and
moral relations is a gradual process, and the fact that for the sake of
brevity and clearness we fix and describe certain arbitrary points in
that process must not be taken to imply that it is discontinuous. Anyhow
there is no doubt that the specifically wolfish attitude of one nation
to another can hardly be found in its pure state, being already tempered
and mitigated by the practice and custom of diplomacy: and this
diplomatic mitigation, however superficial, does something to break down
that windowless isolation which is the essential cause of violence
between two independent moral entities. Pacificists of the democratic
school sometimes present a fallacious view of international diplomacy,
and almost imply that the present war was made inevitable by the fact
that Viscount Grey was educated at Harrow, or that peace could have
been preserved with Germany if only Sir Edward Goschen had begun life as
a coal heaver, or had at least been elected by the National Union of
Boilermakers. Their panacea they vaguely call the democratic control of
Foreign Affairs, though it is not clear why we should expect twenty
million still ignorant voters to be more enlightened than one educated
representative who is, as a matter of fact, usually so much oppressed by
a due sense of his responsibility that he is in danger of bungling only
from excessive timidity. The experience of the Law Courts shows that
twelve men, be they never so good and true, cannot _at present_ be
trusted to weigh and discriminate as nicely as one[6]; and the fact that
the _Daily Mail_ has the largest circulation of any morning paper is a
sufficient mark of the present capacity and inclination of the majority
to control public affairs more directly than they do. It is said that
the secrecy of diplomatic affairs breeds an atmosphere of suspicion; and
it might be said with equal truth that all secrecy of every kind is
always and everywhere the most unnecessary thing in the world.[7] But
the fundamental fallacy of all these arguments is that they treat
diplomacy as an essential of international relations, whereas it is only
an accident, a trapping, a convenience, or a common form. Its defects
are the result and th