1914] on The Foundations of Diplomacy 11 



is recognized and reckoned upon abroad. In those of our embassies 

 and legations that are presided over by diplomatists — and there are 

 still such — whose main solicitude is the welfare of their country, its 

 greatness, its moral prestige, the despondent exclamation may often 

 be heard : " If one only knew what the people at home care about !" 

 Whereas a Russian, a French, or a German diplomatist will often go 

 ahead at the risk of " breaking his neck," as the phrase runs, in order 

 to make his country •" tell," a British diplomatist has of late years 

 been handicapped by the feeling that " people at home " know Httle, 

 and care less, about the problems with which he is seeking to grapple, 

 and that the Government which he serves will probably think more of 

 him if he devotes his attention rather to commercial and financial 

 details than to the larger issues of national influence. The problem 

 to be faced here at home is how to generate an informed national 

 will, and how to switch the power-current of public feeling on i o 

 the wires through which our influence is felt abroad. How can the 

 public be made to distinguish between the permanent and the 

 episodic : how to appreciate the fact that, despite the rapid changes of 

 modern life, the old principles of national efficiency, the co-efficients 

 of national greatness, are unaltered ? 



It can only be done by steady painstaking propaganda. Propa- 

 ganda in the Universities, where the present generation of undergra- 

 duates is eager for knowledge and instruction in matters of national, 

 imperial and international import. Propaganda in and through the 

 press, which will rapidly open its columns and put its disseminating 

 power at the disposal of national educationalists as soon as it is made 

 to feel that such matters are as " interesting " as a football match. 

 Propaganda from the platform, from the pulpit, in debating societies, 

 and in working-men's clubs. Who is to undertake such propaganda ? 

 One of the most influential and " initiated " of our diplomatists with 

 whom I recently discussed this question, said, " A nucleus must be 

 formed, a nucleus of volunteer national educationalists." Who can 

 form this nucleus ? Every man or woman who believes it necessary 

 to teach a higher national ideal than that of amusement and self- 

 indulgence, who knows that in any contest it is grit, determination, 

 pertinacity,and belief in some superior principle underlying phenomena 

 that counts and guarantees victory ; everyone who holds that Gam- 

 betta's faith in " la justice immanente des choses " corresponds to 

 some fundamental scheme of the Universe, some cosmic rhythm. Lest 

 cynics and superior sceptics cavil at the ultimate practical value of such 

 propaganda, let them be reminded of some historical examples. The 

 injustice done to the kingdom of Poland in 1772 at the instance of 

 Frederick the Great, and with the complicity of Austria and Russia, 

 is to-day, as it has been for more than a century, a mill-stone 

 round the neck of at least two of those countries. The ingratitude 

 shown by Austria towards Russia on the occasion of the Crimean War 

 — the requital, by an attitude of selfish " trimming," of a generous 



