1917] Some Guarantees of Liberty 101 



WEEKLY EYEXINCI MEETING, 



Friday, May 4, 1017. 



Sir James Reid, Bart., G.C.V.O. K.C.B. M.D. LL.D., 



Vice-President, in the Chair. 



H. WiCKHAM Steed, Author of " L'Angleterre et la Guerre." 



Some Guarantees of Liberty. 



It is rather more than three years since I had the honour, at the 

 end of January, 1914, to address you upon " The Foundations of 

 Diplomacy." At the beginning of that discourse I gave, as an 

 explanation of its genesis, the gist of some correspondence Avhich 

 had passed betAveen me at Vienna and an influential Englishman in 

 London in the autumn of 1912, in which I had insisted that com- 

 plications between Austria and Serbia might entail a European 

 €onflagration, and compel Great Britain to fight at a moment's notice 

 for the defence of the Scheldt and even of Calais, that is to say, 

 of the " Narrow Seas," against a German army. In addressing you, 

 I deplored the ignorance in which our people had been left as to the 

 essential conditions of our national freedom, and asked, "Why should 

 the British Government be deprived of the strength that comes 

 from the support of an awakened and well-informed public opinion ? 

 Why should our diplomatic action be hampered by the inability of 

 our people to understand the bearings of issues that may drag us, 

 willy-nilly, into a life-and-death struggle, whereas appreciation of 

 the dangers involved might have enabled us to exercise our influence 

 discerningly, and in time ? " 



I defined the true basis of diplomacy as " living knowledge in 

 the service of an ideal," and said that, " if a nation is to play the 

 part of a living, driving force in the world, it must have a conscious 

 ideal. This ideal must be so plain and clear, so evidently con- 

 nected - with the higher interests of the community, that it shall 

 commend itself to and command the instantaneous support of the 

 majority of right-feeling citizens." In conclusion, I declared it to 

 be my profound " conviction that no shrewd calculation of interests, 

 no canny avoidance of moral responsibilities, avails to replace a sane 

 ideal in the management of foreign affairs ; and that if our nation 

 is to come safely through the trials that may be in store for it, our 

 people must again be taught a sound ideal — not, indeed, an ideal 

 divorced from reason, but such as to inspire it and those who control 



