view, and to enforce that upon a nation is as though a man with a
pronounced squint were to be accepted as a man of normal vision. We have
seen what it involves in Germany. In a less offensive form, however, it
exists in most states, and its root idea is usually that the civilian as
such belongs to a lower order of humanity, and is not so important to the
State as the officer who discharges vague and for the most part useless
functions in the War Office.[4] It is a swollen, over-developed militarism
that has got us into the present mess, and one of our earliest concerns,
when the storm is over, must be to put it into its proper place. Let him
who uses the sword perish by the sword.

[4] Thus it was the Military party in Bulgaria which drove her to the
disastrous second Balkan war, and the Military party in Austria which
insisted on the ultimatum to Servia.


DIPLOMACY

And I fear that there is another ancient piece of our international
strategy which has been found wanting. I approach with some hesitation the
subject of diplomacy, because it contains so many elements of value to a
state, and has given so many opportunities for active and original minds.
Its worst feature is that its operations have to be conducted in secret:
its best is that it affords a fine exemplification of the way in which the
history and fortunes of states are--to their advantage--dependent upon
the initiative of gifted and patriotic individuals. But if we look back
over the history of recent years, we shall discover that diplomacy has not
fulfilled its especial mission. According to a well-known cynical dictum a
diplomatist is a man who is paid to lie for his country. And, indeed, it
is one of the least gracious aspects of the diplomatic career that it