Factors Underlying British Foreign Policy

Abstract

IN looking back on our history, one finds that most of what one was brought up to believe were the dominating principles of British foreign policy are not, in fact, so. For instance, I do not believe that the dominating principle of our foreign policy is, as has been supposed, the preservation of the Low Countries-as a safeguard against that pistol pointed at the head of England by a powerful foreign State. At times we have fought paftly, but never more than partly, for the preservation and integrity of the Low Countries; but, after all, at one time we offered the Austrian Netherlands (Belgium today) to Prussia, and in 1830 we agreed to the independence of Belgium knowing that she was very likely to unite with our old enemy and then chief bugbear, France. Nor can it, I believe, be true to say, important as the factor has been in our foreign policy, that the freedom of the seas is the sole and dominating motive of our foreign policy; in the last twenty years we have seen the sovereignty of the seas pass to the United States without a tremor. Nor can it, I think, be true to say that the classical conception of a balance of power is the basis of our foreign policy; there is not very much balance of power in Europe today. I believe we have to go deeper and that if we were to substitute for the words Balance of Power the words Balance of Health, we should be rather nearer to it. I think our foreign policy is explained, as the foreign policy of all countries must be explained, by our own internal history. The history of our country is that of an island, free from danger and so allowing a development of freedom and self-responsibility in the individual as a political unit; an island, too, with a healthy and balanced climate and soil wisely and industriously used for the greater part of our history-though not, alas, perhaps today-breeding sturdy but adaptable stock and brave, tenacious, but intelligent and sensitive men and women possessing a wise faith and morality based on the ultimate laws of life: love, not hate; courage and trust, not suspicion and fear; giving rather than taking; a respect for others; ;gentleness, truth, justice; in other words, that observance of natural law, physical and moral, which is health. I am idealizing, looking at the broad perspective, but I think it is true. And all those things against which we have contended in our relations with the outer world, greed, aggression, suspicion, tyranny, are themselves symptoms of ill health; they are symptoms of disease which always carry the seeds of destruction with them. So in our foreign policy we find a sense of balance of health, a consideration for the rights and feelings of other nations; conciliation and persuasion