One of the first acts of the Russian Soviet Government was to announce its hostility to secret diplomacy. When it first published the secret treaties and documents of the Czarist Government, its motive was, as shown by Trotsky’s declaration made at the time, thoroughly to discredit the management of affairs under the old régime. In the same connection, it announced its own purpose of conducting foreign affairs in the open. Such seems indeed to have been its general practice with respect to the announcement of policies, though its agents continued to use underground methods. One thing, however, the Soviet Government is evidently trying to bring about, namely, a broad public interest in the conduct of foreign affairs. It desires the Russian people, and more particularly the members of the ruling Communist Party, to be currently informed about the progress of international affairs and about arrangements concluded. Observers report that at the meeting of the provincial soviets the first business ordinarily taken up is the reading and discussion of a report on international relations sent by the central government. We have no means to check up the truth of these reports; but this effort to interest the broad mass of the population in the outward relations of the state is certainly worth notice. The expectation is encouraged that the reason for acts relating to foreign affairs will be explained, particularly when sacrifices are demanded. XIII A SURVIVAL OF ABSOLUTISM Those who view the modern state as a purely predatory organization,--for exploitation within and without,--point to the methods, practices and results of diplomacy as one of the plainest indications of the sinister nature of the political state. Such criticism cannot be safely brushed aside as utterly unreasonable; it should rather call forth a searching inquiry as to whether, as a matter of fact, the conduct of foreign affairs could not and should not be brought into greater consonance with genuinely democratic principles, and be placed on the sound basis of well-informed public support. No matter what opinion one may hold with respect to the necessity of secret diplomacy, it must be recognized that this practice involves a very narrow conception of the active scope of democracy. It is in fact a historical survival from the period of the absolutist state; or in other words, that aspect of the modern state which deals with foreign affairs has retained the character of absolutism. It is a superstition, in the picturesque sense of that word used by Lowell, when he defines it as “something left standing over from one of the world’s witenagemotes to the other.” In this case, indeed the most recent witenagemote approached the question and proposed a step in advance towards its solution. But the difficulty still persists.