Page:Diplomacy and the Study of International Relations (1919).djvu/12

From Wikisource
Jump to navigation Jump to search
This page has been proofread, but needs to be validated.
viii
Preface

intercourse of nations. The two studies have, of late, been too much severed in this country.

A concluding section of the book, apart from the Appendix, treats of ‘International Morality: Projects of Perpetual Peace: The Society of Nations’. The standpoint throughout this work is historical; and History does not give much encouragement to the promulgators of schemes of Perpetual Peace. But historians and historical students of politics and policy should not too readily submit to the charge that they can provide no principles for guidance; that they are slaves to ‘the event’, and can furnish nothing better than maxims finely qualified to the point of timidity; that, like the Cyclops, they have but one eye, and that it looks behind only, and, according to the poet-moralist's censure of the historian, takes delight in the blazoning of ‘power and energy detached from moral purpose’. Everything, it was said by a recent Continental statesman, may be left in part to the hazards of the unforeseen—everything except the fortunes of nations. The historian of international policy will add all the weight of his knowledge and authority to the school of caution and pre-cautions in statesmanship. But the lessons he draws, or merely permits to disclose themselves, from the past are not sunk in gloom so deep that he may not say with Tocqueville, ‘I will not believe in the darkness merely because I do not clearly see the new day that is to arise’.

The main Appendix consists of two parts. The first gives, within its space and scope, a selection of passages from writers to illustrate phases and features of diplomacy. These extracts were given, according to my first plan, in illustration of the thought and standpoint of each of the authors cited, and were included in the seventh section of ‘The Study of International Relations'. My thanks are due to the publishers' advisers, and especially to Mr. H. W. C. Davis, of Balliol College, for