Neither the fumbles of our occasional ignorant envoys nor the correct discretion of the career men gave us any habit of thinking about other countries. On the west coast there is a tradition of wariness about the Orient--but it rises from immigration, not international relations. We have no habit of hatred as the French had for Germany, no cultivated friendships except for the occasional visit of a prince. We are not susceptible to European flattery if we live beyond the Atlantic seaboard--or below the $50,000 income level; for crowds, a Hollywood star is at least as magnetic as a Balkan Queen; and it is not conceivable that we should ever treat the coming of a Russian ballet as a part of a political campaign, as the French, quite correctly, did in 1913. We are now paying for our quiet unfortified borders, for the broad seas so suddenly narrowed. We have to learn about foreign affairs, about our own Empire (we hardly know that we have one). And this is the hardest thing of all: that while we move in ignorance, _we have to re-work all the basic concepts of international affairs_, or they will destroy us. We will have some support in the people of Great Britain, in the governments of Scandinavia, and in the diplomatic habits of the USSR; but for the most part we must make our way alone. _Debunking Protocol_ Again, as in the case of military strategy, the average man must study the subject to protect himself. He can no longer risk his life, and the fortunes of his family, in the hands of a few career men in the State Department, working secretly, studying protocol, forgetting the people of the United States. The amateur statesman is as laughable as the amateur strategist, but the laugh is not always going to be on us. We will popularize diplomacy or it will destroy us. We have first of all to destroy the myth of "high politics". We have to examine Macchiavelli and Talleyrand and Bismarck and Disraeli with as much realism as we examine Benedict Arnold and James J. Hill and Edison and Kruger. We need journalist-debunkers to do the work, a parallel, by the way, to the process of simplifying military discussion, which is being done by newspaper and radio experts. We have to learn that the great tricks, the great arrangements of power, have been as shady as horse-trades, as ruthless as robbery, and often as magnificent as building a railroad--but in all cases they have represented the desires of certain groups, powerful enough at any given time to impose their wishes on the people. War, business, patriotism, medicine, sociology, religion, and sex have all been re-examined and debunked in the past two generations; but diplomacy which can destroy our satisfaction in all of them, still parades as the perfect stuffed shirt, with a red ribbon across it. At the moment no one can say whether Hitler has blasted the Foreign Office and our State Department; if he has, it is an achievement equal to taking Crete; and we ought to thank him for it.