bject
is protected when abroad, and if the trade and industry of the country on
which the welfare and livelihood of every individual citizen ultimately
depends is fostered and safe-guarded, then the primary duties of the
British Government in relation to other Governments have been discharged.

But this is not enough. If the interests of the individual citizen of Great
Britain are to be permanently secured in relation to foreign countries, we
must be assured that the policy of foreign Governments is civilised and
generally friendly to British subjects. There must be a general rule of law
throughout the world on which British subjects can count with assurance of
safety. And so the Foreign Office has a third and even more important class
of work:

(3) The maintenance of permanent good relations with foreign countries.
These good relations are secured, not only by continually friendly
communication with foreign Governments over innumerable questions of
policy, but also by the conclusion of a network of treaties, some of them
designed to establish international co-operation in particular social or
economic questions such, for instance, as the existing treaty between Great
Britain and France providing for the mutual payment of compensation under
the Workmen's Compensation Laws of the two countries, and others concluded
with the object of defining the mutual policy of different countries in
general matters such as the regulation of trade. The newest and most
important class of treaties are those which, like the Hague Conventions and
the treaties guaranteeing the neutrality of Belgium and Luxemburg, attempt
to lay down general rules of law which all countries agree to observe.
In other words, the office of diplomacy is to secure _certainty_ in the
government of the world, so that every man may know what to expect in
dealing with his fellow-man of a different nationality.

It is difficult to describe adequately the complexity of this diplomatic
work. The economic and social systems of the world have become so involved
and intertwined that there is hardly anything one country can do which does
not react in some way on the interests of the subjects of another country.

In every European country, and in the United States, the Government is
being more and more called upon to regulate the delicate economic and
social machinery on which modern life depends. Each Government adopts an
attitude towards such problems which is determine