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PAR TIS A N R'EVlEW
in polite and courtly disputation, and, free from the clatter and babel
of democracy, could reshape systems upon the fundamentals of which
they were all agreed. The peoples, transported by their sufferings and
by the mass teachings with which they had been inspired, stood around
in scores of millions to demand that retribution should be exacted to
the full.
Policy is the content of politics in a time and place in which those
who enjoy political power are agreed as to fundamentals, generally a
way of life which none would think to question. Policy is practical
and empirical, rather than philosophical and moral, and is limited in
scope, having nothing to say about the nonpolitical areas of life. The
ends are given in advance. An ideology, however, represents the politi–
calization of the whole of life; it is an attempt to give an intellectual con–
struction the authority of a religion and make it do duty as a way of
life. Where politics is ideological, everything tends to be called into
question, including the humanity of your opponent. Policy is more
genial than ideology, more consciously cynical, less concerned with
justice, and perhaps less terrible for that reason.
In an address delivered before the Conservative Members Com–
mittee on Foreign Affairs in March 1936, which he reprints in
The
Gathering Storm}
Churchill stated very clearly the nonideological prin–
ciples that he thinks ought to guide British foreign policy:
For four hundred years the foreign policy of England has been to
oppose the strongest, most aggressive, most dominating power on the
Continent, and particularly to prevent the Low Countries falling into
the hands of such a Power. . . . Therefore, we should not be afraid
of being accused of being pro-French or anti-German.
If
the circum–
stances were reversed, we could equally be pro-German and anti–
French. It is a law of public policy which we are folIowing, and not a
mere expedient dictated by accidental circumstances, or likes and dis–
likes, or any other sentiment.... We ought to set the life and en–
durance of the British Empire and the greatness of this island very
high in our duty, and not be led astray by illusions about an ideal world,
which only means that other and worse controls wilI step into our place,
and that the future direction will belong to them.
Implicit in this is that cynicism-here erected into a principle-which
made the old diplomacy notorious and which gave Albion in particular,
in the nineteenth century, its reputation for being perfidious. Today
diplomacy is on the whole no longer cynical but sincere. The old
diplomacy suffered from a bad conscience and cloaked its dealings
in secrecy. The new diplomacy, for which the ends justify the most
cynical changes of line, is entirely self-righteous and blatantly open. In
