"Conventional diplomacy and conventional statesmanship have very
evidently broken down in Europe. They have made a disastrous failure of
the work with which they were intrusted. They did not and could not
prevent the war because they knew and used only the old formulas. They
had no tools for a job like this.
"A new type of international statesman is certain to arise, who will
have a grasp of new tendencies, a new outlook upon life. Bismarck used
to say that it would pay any nation to wear the clean linen of a
civilized State. The truth of this must be taught to those nations of
the world which are weakest in morale, and it can only be done, I
suppose, as similar work is accomplished with individuals. Courts, not
killings, have accomplished it with individuals.
"One more point ought to be remembered. We sometimes hear it said that
nationalism, the desire for national expression by each individual
nation, makes the permanent peace and good order of the world
impossible.
"To me it seems absurd to believe that this is any truer of nations than
it is of individuals. It is not each nation's desire for national
oppression which makes peace impossible; it is the fact that thus far in
the world's history such desire has been bound up with militarism.
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