But we cannot believe that the peoples of the world will be so foolish as to allow themselves to remain in this condition and not to find their way to a reorganization of public affairs which will make such a haphazard and perilous situation impossible. It seems plain that the idea of the state and of state action will have to be transformed in accordance with the greater self-consciousness of humanity which has developed in the last century, or the desire to scrap the political state and to find some more adequate and natural form of organization will rapidly gain in strength. Meanwhile, there is a need of the formation of a great freemasonry of all publicists, political men and teachers of the people, united in the resolve to know and make known the essential elements in current international affairs, to arouse the public to a sense of the importance of these matters to their every-day life, and to support the men more directly responsible for the conduct of foreign policy, with an intelligent, searching, reasonable and broad public opinion. XIV RECENT AMERICAN EXPERIENCE Up until a recent date Americans could contemplate the play of secret diplomacy in Europe and Asia with a feeling of entire aloofness, as belonging to a political society which had neither need nor inclination to utilize such methods. Our unmenaced continental position, the natural protection and separation implied in distance and ocean boundaries, and the conscious intention of keeping clear of international entanglements, all contributed to make the foreign policy of the United States entirely public and straightforward. The fathers of the Constitution had established the sound principle that treaties are the law of the land. This not only involves mature consideration of a treaty before it is made, but publicity as well. The American people have known at all times what obligations had been incurred, and the world had the same information. There has been no room for guesswork and suspicion. The instructions which were issued to John Jay when he was sent as special envoy to England in 1794 lay down the following rule of conduct: “It is the President’s wish that the characteristics of an American minister should be marked on the one hand by a firmness against improper compliances, and on the other by sincerity, candor, truth and prudence, and by a horror of finesse and chicane.” These straightforward words began a tradition which has ever since animated the American diplomatic service. When after the Spanish war, under Secretary Hay, American diplomacy entered more fully into world-wide problems than in any previous era, the expression “the new diplomacy” was currently used in a laudatory sense to designate what Hay had implied when in a public address he had declared the Golden Rule to be the cardinal principle of American diplomacy--an ideal which makes secrecy and intrigue unnecessary.