12 The Foundations of Diplomacy [Jan. -M), 



impulse on the part of a quixotic Tsar — induced Russia in 1866 to 

 stand idly by while Prussian arms were crushing Austria, and led 

 Eussia, four years later, effectively to veto any combination that 

 could restore the Hapsburg Monarchy to its place in Europe : the 

 pusillanimity of the neutral Powers in sanctioning, in 1871, the 

 annexation of Alsace-Lorraine by Germany — a sin of omission that 

 has entailed, and is entailing, the crushing burden of European 

 armaments and the maintenance of the huge idle armies that are a 

 menace to civilization ; and the injustice done to the Balkan peoples 

 in 1878, when, from motives of short-sighted jealousy, and equally 

 short-sighted " policy," the treaty of San Stefano was torn up by 

 the Powers and the situation created which, through oppression, 

 murder, and rapine, was to lead to the recent Balkan wars and to 

 the present condition of unstable equilibrium, of which the end is 

 not yet. Though I speak for myself alone, you will not, I think, 

 refuse some weight to the testimony of a witness who has Ijeen obliged 

 for more than twenty-one years continuously to observe the de- 

 velopment of European affairs, if I declare 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 its affairs 

 with the belief that the thing chiefly needful is to know what is 

 just and right, and to be ready and able to do it because it is just 

 and right. 



[H.W.S.] 



