to the demands of a clamorous public opinion—of a 'will of all' that may not have known the true 'general will'. 'If I could from this place address the English people', said Lord Derby in 1878, 'I would venture to ask them how they can expect to have a foreign policy, I do not say far-sighted, but even consistent and intelligent, if within eighteen months the great majority of them are found asking for things directly contradictory'.[1] The measuring of public opinion is for the statesman as hard a task as its instruction. Even to public opinion, when voiced by representatives, and in its action not immediate and not impulsive, there are limits of competence, bounds imposed by discretion. We should not forget that in 1890, in the course of discussions on the proposed cession of Heligoland to Germany, Mr. Gladstone questioned both the constitutionality and the high expediency of asking the Houses of Parliament to share the treaty-making power—a power exercised by ministers who are well aware of their responsibility to Parliament and to the nation.[2] And who shall yet say how far diplomacy in the decisive week at the end of July 1914 had to reckon with a consideration that should have been out of the reckoning altogether—the limits to party cohesion and party allegiance where the interest and the honour of the whole British Commonwealth were at stake?
The lessons of example and the force of historical evidence are not wholly cast in one mould. But the very nature of the problems should preclude, in the modern State, anything like direct participation of a vast number of minds and tongues in the initiation, the conduct, and the control of foreign policy; not least in Great Britain. A plainer foreign policy than there has usually been may be possible.[3] But that any
