The Meaning of Yalta [antikvár]

ForewordA GREAT American, Elihu Root, who at one time was Secretary of State, once observed that when foreign affairs are ruled by autocracies or oligarchies the danger of war lies in sinister purpose. He went on to say that when foreign affairs are directed by democracies the danger of war lies in mistaken beliefs. Of the two forms of control in foreign affairs, Root preferred the democratic because, as he said, while there is no human way to prevent the autocrat from having a bad heart, there is a human way to prevent people from having erroneous opinions. "That way," said Root, "is to furnish the whole people, as a part of their ordinary education, with correct information about their relations to other peoples, about the limitations upon their own rights, about their duties to respect the rights of others, about what has happened and is happening in international affairs, and about the effects upon national life of the things that are done or refused as between nations; so that the people themselves will have the means to test misinformation and appeals to prejudice and passion based upon error." ^The study which follows within the covers of this small book is an able and a devoted effort by four young American historians to apply this philosophy of foreign affairs so ably expressed by Root and, in particular, to direct its application to the processes by which men seek to create peace out of war.The problems of peacemaking are neither new nor static. Ten years after Napoleon was exiled to St. Helena, the peace settlement of 1814-15 was already undermined by the forces of nationalism and liberalism. Ten years after the end of World War I, the treaties of peace had already been revised1 Elihu Root, "A Requisite for the Success of Popular Diplomacy," Foreign Affairs, I (September, 1922), 5.