The conduct of foreign affairs is a matter much less easy to reform. If despotisms were not such desperately untrustworthy things, a good sound autocracy would probably be the best form of government for the function of conducting the affairs of one nation with another. The extraordinary diplomatic success of Russia is an evidence of this. But Russia also illustrates the drawbacks of despotism. In its management of foreign affairs Russia has (despite the habit which its departments occasionally display of acting in conflict with one another) beaten all the civilised nations. Russia has a "continuous" foreign policy. There are no changes of ministers to nullify each other's work and to encourage the diplomatists of other nations to procrastinate and shilly-shally over negotiations in the hope that a general election will bring in a new set of statesmen, easier to deal with. And Russia can herself procrastinate, prevaricate and play all sorts of tricks, neglect her promises, ignore her pledges, and prosecute her cryptic aims, without the smallest fear of a question in Parliament to spoil her game by letting all the world into her dark and devious secrets. The more a nation becomes democratised, the less competent it is to manage its foreign policy against less democratic nations, and a truly popular Government is, in the present state of the world, about the worst conceivable instrument for that purpose. With an ever-increasing democratisation of all governments such as we are sure to witness during this century, foreign offices of the present kind will become more and more incompetent until some sort of machinery is invented in their place. Nor will the disappearance of the ultimate resort to arms, as a possibility always threatening in the background, tend to improve matters. It will, on the contrary, make them worse. There can be no doubt that the awful fear of war, which must haunt the pillow of every statesman in our day with dreams of pitiable horror, does exercise an influence in settling controversies which, without this terror, would drag their slow length along from generation to exasperated generation. And if we try to imagine that the increased conscientiousness of a better time will help nations to deal more honourably with each other, it is to be feared that even the vast progress of the quick-moving century on which we have entered will not suffice to bind the princes to its pleasure and teach their senators wisdom. It is unfortunately in regard to honour between nation and nation that conscience develops most slowly, and many a man who would scorn to trick a fellow-citizen, or even defraud a railway company, and who would quite possibly hesitate before smuggling a box of cigars through the custom-house, will calmly advocate acts of international dishonesty and oppression abhorrent to any conscientious mind.