I CONFESS that when I began to set down my thoughts on this
subject I had a certain envy of those who deal not with centuries
but civilizations. Few people know very much about even one
civilization, let alone a dozen and some of them are so imperfectly
known that it is possible to make almost any kind of generalization
about them without the fear of being immediately challenged by
some awkward fact. But British Foreign Policy during the last
150 years is based on incontrovertible historical records which
have now been studied and analysed by a host of writers. It is
true that most of this scientific study even of the earlier part of the
nineteenth century has taken place since the First World War.
We have, for example, only comparatively recently learnt any-
thing of the real history of the British contribution to the great
treaties of Vienna, Paris and Berlin. The period after 1878 was a
mysterious world of secret treaties when I first began to study
history and not all the archives have yet been opened and sur-
veyed. This is even more true for the diplomacy of the First World
War and of the period between the wars. But even so, though no
doubt changes will occur in the estimation of personalities, or of
the contributory causes to great events, the main facts are now
fairly well established and it is unlikely that anything will be re-
vealed that will greatly disturb them.

I am conscious, therefore, that I am speaking on a subject which
is well known to you; indeed some of its aspects are truisms with
which we are familiar from childhood. But, as Croce often insisted,
the past only lives in the light of the present. The new interest in
older civilizations, for example, is due not so much to the new
knowledge which we possess about them as to the fact that we
are more conscious of the dangerous state of that one in which
we live. Similarly the great events through which we have recently

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