re of the United States themselves is to be decided. The people of
the United States will not remain indifferent and inactive spectators
and will not authorize, will not approve, any policy of indifference.
You yourself have told me so, sir.

In the position of every considerable country there is a necessity of a
certain course, to adopt which cannot be avoided, and may be almost
called destiny. The duty as well as the wisdom of statesmen consists in
the ability to steer, in time, the vessel into that course, which, if
they neglect to do in time, the price will be higher and the profit
less.

There is scarcely anything which has more astonished me than the
fact--that, for the last thirty-seven years, almost every Christian
nation has shared the great fault of not caring much about what are
called foreign matters, foreign policy. Precisely the great nations,
England, France, America, which might have regulated the course of their
governments for a very considerable period, abandoned almost entirely
that part of their public concerns, which with great nations is the most
important of all, because it regulates the position of the country in
its great national capacity. The slightest internal interest was
discussed publicly and regulated previously by the nation, before the
government had to execute it; but, as to the most important
interest--the national position of the country and its relations to the
world, Secret Diplomacy, a fatality of mankind, stepped in, and the
nations had to accept the consequences of what was already done, though
they subsequently reproved it. In England, I four months ago, avowed
that all the interior questions together cannot equal in importance the
exterior; _there_ is summed up the future of Britain: and if the
people of England do not cut short the secrecy of diplomacy--if it do
not in time take this all absorbing interest into its own hands, as it
is wont to do with every small home interest, it will have to meet
immense danger very soon, as this danger has already seriously
accumulated by former neglect. Here too, in the United States, there is
no possible question equal in importance to foreign policy, and
especially in regard to European matters. And I say that, if the United
States do not in due time adopt such a course, as will prevent the Czar
of Russia, and his despotic satellites, from believing that the United
States give them entirely free field to regulate the condition of
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