But of all forms of prestige, moral prestige is the most valuable, and no statesman should forget that one of the chief elements of British power is the moral weight that is behind it. It is the conviction that British policy is essentially honourable and straightforward, that the word and honour of its statesmen and diplomatists may be implicitly trusted, and that intrigues and deceptions are wholly alien to their nature. The statesman must steer his way between rival fanaticisms--the fanaticism of those who pardon everything if it is crowned by success and conduces to the greatness of the Empire, and who act as if weak Powers and savage nations had no moral rights; and the fanaticism of those who always seem to have a leaning against their own country, and who imagine that in times of war, anarchy, or rebellion, and in dealings with savage or half-savage military populations, it is possible to act with the same respect for the technicalities of law, and the same invariably high standard of moral scrupulousness, as in a peaceful age and a highly civilised country. In the affairs of private life the distinction between right and wrong is usually very clear, but it is not so in public affairs. Even the moral aspects of political acts can seldom be rightly estimated without the exercise of a large, judicial, and comprehensive judgment, and the spirit which should actuate a statesman should be rather that of a high-minded and honourable man of the world than that of a theologian, or a lawyer, or an abstract moralist.