the business of States be attuned to openness so markedly naked and so frankly unabashed. A Duke of Albany thus active and thus open may have his successors: yet, whether we are thinking of individual politicians or of masses of men. But his place is not that of Managing Director of the Board of Control for Foreign Affairs. Still, even to open diplomacy must be conceded its several types, its several grades.
Those in Britain who have lately criticized the very foundations of the British plan of conducting foreign policy, on the ground of its disregard of democratic methods and national rights, are neither genuinely democratic nor genuinely national. They do not recognize the nature of democracy in the large and extended communities of to-day, and they convey the impression that the foreign policy of Britain can be, and has been, conducted, under the prevailing forms and facts of her politics, not only with the secrecy but even with the independence which characterized the methods and the powers of the Council of Ten in the Republic of Venice.[1] They protest on the ground of 'freedom'. They have probably false notions of freedom. They do not inquire, as we should always be asking ourselves, and should inquire of others, when that word is used, 'Freedom?—From what?' 'Freedom?—For what?' 'Freedom?—To whom?' May it be freedom to those who repudiate a State obligation at a time of national danger? If we were to carry farther our analysis of this species of democratic fervour and of the movement which it inspires and is designed to help, we should find that many of those who speak and labour under its influence cannot take a dispassionate view of the manner and the instruments of the conduct of foreign policy. Many of them there are who have been influenced by considerations of an extraneous kind—by an economic bias, for example, with the consequences it seems
- ↑ See Horatio F. Brown, Venice: An Historical Sketch (1893), e.g. p. 182.
