It has often happened that what represents itself to be a national interest and enlists diplomatic and political support in that way, is really only the enterprise of individuals to make profits. The men who support it with their best energies and talents are not villains, but their method of assuming a great national interest where only a tradition, a prejudice or a private plan of profit are involved, renders their doings far from beneficial to the commonweal. Similarly, those who operate on the principle that the public mind must be nourished with certain carefully selected facts and kept from the knowledge of others, may have honest motives, but their ideas of public action are obsolete or deserve to be so, as they are left over from the absolutist régime in politics.
