§4. _The Estimation of National Forces._--It has been necessary to undertake this long discussion in order to give a more or less clear idea of the work done by diplomacy in maintaining a stable international system. Arising out of this we have now to consider the fourth class of work--and the most difficult--which the Foreign Office has to perform. For want of a better name we may call it--
(4) The estimation of national forces. Nations are not mere agglomerations of individuals; they have each their own character, their own feelings, and their own life. Science has done little to determine the laws of their growth, but, as we have seen, each nation does grow, reaches out slowly--almost insensibly--in this or that direction, and gathers to itself new interests which in their turn give new impulse to its growth. Perhaps the best simile that we can use for the foreign policy of the world is that of a rather tangled garden, where creepers are continually growing and taking root in new soil and where life is therefore always threatening and being threatened by new life. The point is that we are dealing with _life_--with its growth and decay; not with the movements of pieces on a chequer-board.
Now, the Foreign Office largely exists in order to watch this growth and, like a gardener, to train and lead it in directions where it can expand without danger. But for this work intimate knowledge is necessary--knowledge not so much of the personal character or policy of those who govern the different nations, but knowledge of the character, the economic needs, the beliefs, the feelings, and the aspirations of the half-dumb millions who form and ultimately determine the life of each nation. The diplomatist must study every political and social movement which goes on in a nation; he must estimate the effect which the national system of education is having on the mind of the nation; he must form an idea of the lessons which the Government of his own country should learn from the government of other countries, whether it be, for instance, lessons in constitutional government or in municipal sanitation; and he must above all be able to warn his Government of the dangers to his own country which the growth of foreign countries seems to entail, in order that peaceful measures may be taken in time to prevent a collision.