Date of Award

5-1953

Degree Type

Master's Essay - Restricted

Degree Name

Master of Arts (MA)

Department

History

Abstract

If one could estimate the progress made in international relations between 1815 and 1914 as an abstract quantity, separating it in our minds from the other developments of that century, it might appear as a considerable achievement . Numerous international offices had been established to deal with administrative business. Private international societies had arisen in every important field of human interest . The practice of arbitration had become familiar and its advantages were recognized by governments in general.1 The great powers, though they still refused any obligation to meet for the discussion of critical situations, had on the whole maintained the habit of such meetings . But when one contemplates the changes in other spheres during that ·one hundred year period, he is struck by the inadequacy of the developments in international relations. Scientific and industrial progress had produced profound alterations in the conditions of life. The political institutions and the administrative services of nearly all States, the armies and navies of every important state had kept pace with the new discoveries and the new methods.2Only in the field of relations among nations of the world had there been no corresponding advance. The small group of statesmen and diplomatists, who at the end of the nineteenth century retained the chief responsibility for foreign policy, still held to the doctrines and methods of past generations. They had apparently not learned to adjust their policies to the growth of democratic institutions and of the sentiment of nationality, nor to adjust their methods to the material conditions of t he new age . It was as though t he unreformed House of Commons of the eighteen-twenties were attempting to govern the British Empire of the twentieth century.

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