CONTEMPORARY DEVELOPMENT OF DIPLOMACY 371 



of his sovereign master. Since the destruction of competitors is an 

 indirect method of increasing our own superiority, the aims of 

 diplomacy -- according to this school of thought --are not only 

 to keep our own secrets, but to discover those of our neighbors; not 

 only to form favorable relations with other powers, but to destroy 

 those of our rivals; not only to establish our own commerce, but to 

 undermine and defeat the commercial enterprises of others. Depth 

 of knowledge, rectitude of principle, elevation of character, and 

 regard for the common good may be personal adornments; but they 

 are not indispensable to a diplomatic agent, and may even embarrass 

 his success. 



Let us admit that nations cannot exist without a primary regard 

 for their own interests; that force is the final safeguard of justice 

 in every form of human society; and that war may sometimes be 

 necessary and even become a duty. But is it true that suspicion 

 and hostility, rather than mutual confidence and friendship, are the 

 natural basis of international relations? Is it true that honor, 

 justice, and cooperation can produce a reign of prosperity and 

 security within the boundaries of particular states, but must 

 obstinately halt at the national frontiers and refuse to pass beyond 

 them? 



It is time to treat the classic axioms of diplomacy as economists 

 have treated the fictions that so long separated economic philosophy 

 from the realm of fact. The theory of the physiocrats, that a nation 

 can be prosperous only as it develops agriculture; and the doctrine 

 of the mercantile school, that national prosperity consists in the 

 accumulation of precious metals, are both now seen to be without 

 foundation. Production is a vital process as manifold as human 

 wants and human faculties, and wealth a state of satisfaction not 

 capable of being measured in the terms of one commodity. Modern 

 thought has made it plain that the deductive method has crippled 

 and disfigured every science which it has ever attempted to organize; 

 for no concrete being is the incarnation of a single principle, and no 

 living thing is incapable of transformation. The law of evolution 

 is as applicable to the forms and elements of human society as it is 

 to the natural world. The sociology of nations presents no exception; 

 and diplomacy needs to be brought down from the realm of false 

 abstractions and unverified traditions, and made to grasp the full 

 significance of the facts and forces of contemporary progress. 



Since the great classic masters of diplomatic science formulated its 

 theories, a profound transformation, half-conscious but wholly 

 inevitable, has taken place. Public attention may accelerate this 

 movement and public indifference may retard it, but no conceivable 

 influence can wholly destroy its w r ork. Since the era of absolutism 

 which the French Revolution interrupted and the Congress of 



