'You have bleared my eye once … I take you as you are.' The words are worthy of Machiavelli.[1]
There is no smooth and easy path for the conduct of international policy; nor for its study. The fortunes of nations should not be left to the hazards of the unforeseen. Those who are responsible for guiding relations between States need a vast equipment in knowledge and in aptitude. They must know the resources, the constitution and manner of government, the treaty obligations, the character of the dominant personalities, the national temperament and national objects, both of their own State and of its connexions—sometimes unruly and suspicious connexions—in the Family of Nations. They must well consider the relation of means to ends. Here, without any doubt, there is need of eyes for the past, the present, and the future—need of the three eyes of prudence: memory, intelligence, providence. By these Fortuna is won. Of all the regions of politics there is no other of which it is so strictly true as of the international, that only the most complete knowledge and command available of all the factors should be allowed to count, whether for those who direct or for those in a succeeding age who try to judge them. There is often in History and Politics some 'one thing unknown' that is required as the key to all. Especially has that been true of policy between State and State.
It is not otherwise, in its own degree, with the study of foreign policy. As the work, so the study. Here, too, there is need of alertness, circumspection, sagacity. It is necessary to search
- ↑ See a letter to Thomas Cromwell from Stephen Vaughan—an agent of Cromwell at Antwerp, in London at the time of writing: an abject appeal for forgiveness for 'one onely fawte, the first and laste that ever I comytted against youe … not the unassurest or untrustiest of your frends. Yowe have sore abasshed and astonyed me.'—Ellis, Original Letters, third series, ii, 215–16.
