4 Mr. H. Wickham Steed [Jan. 30, 



This Secretary of State is, in theory, subject to the control of ParHa- 

 ment, which, in theory, represents the people. In practice, the control 

 exercised by the people througli Parliament is at best intermittent, and 

 may be exercised at the wrong moment. The tacit agreement to treat 

 foreign policy as a non-party matter has further weakened parlia- 

 mentary control. In diplomatic circles on the Continent the only 

 kind of popular control that is recognized ever to affect the manage- 

 ment of British foreign policy is that sometimes exercised by what 

 a horrified Continental ambassador once called " the public opinion 

 of British spinsters." Far be it from me to deride such public 

 opinion. The British spinster, even though her manner of action 

 and expression be extravagant, and though her feelings may be 

 moved by very one-sided or inadequate presentations of a case, is at 

 least acting in the name of an ideal and is not guided by self-interest 

 or by the hope of personal advantage. In her way, she has a con- 

 ception — sometimes an impracticable conception — of foreign pohcy 

 (one which the official bureaucratic or diplomatic mind is fond of 

 regarding as " dangerous "), Ijut a conception born of solicitude for 

 what she feels to be the higher interests of her country. The con- 

 tention I wish to place before you this evening is that if a nation 

 is to play the part of a Uving, driving force in the world, it must 

 have a conscious ideal. This ideal must be so plain and clear, so 

 evidently connected with the higher interests of the comrnunity, 

 that it shall commend itself to and command the instantaneous 

 support of the majority of right-feeling citizens. 



History amply proves the accuracy of this claim. Without re- 

 turning to the era of struggle between England and Spain, a struggle 

 waged originally for religious freedom and national existence, it is 

 only necessary to refer to the contest with France culminating in the 

 struggle against Napoleon, to show that whenever British foreign 

 policy has been most effective, it has embodied the aspirations of the 

 great majority of thinking citizens. The history of other countries 

 teaches the same lesson. The Italian Risorgimento, the diplomatic 

 miracles achieved by Cavour, would not have been possible had not 

 educated Italian sentiment supported the action of the Foreign 

 minister. It is true that the masses of the Italian people were at 

 first comparatively indifferent to the ideal that inspired the middle 

 and upper classes. The people were brought into the movement by 

 the red shirt and the magnetic genius of Garibaldi ; but when once 

 they lent the weight of the mass to the pohcy already inaugurated by 

 the more enhghtened classes, they drove that policy on to its final 

 accomplishment and forced the hands of timorous ministers. The 

 story of German unification teaches the same truth. The seeds had 

 been sown by poets and thinkers long before they sprouted sufficiently 

 for Bismarck to tend and stimulate their growth. Bismarck dehbe- 

 rately worked in accordance with the half -unconscious and ineffectually 

 inarticulate national ideal. He knew that the heart of the nation 



