States or Germany.  Consequently, foreign Governments—­the Governments of civilised countries—­gradually begin to intervene and give protection to their subjects who have concessions in such countries, provided that they have obtained their concessions in a respectable and proper manner.  Competition between the different foreign companies then grows up; their Governments gradually begin to support them against each other in this competition, until at last it becomes necessary for the different Governments, if bad feeling is to be avoided, to try to arrive at some arrangement among themselves, fixing the way in which the concessions granted by this or that semi-civilised country shall be distributed among the subjects of the Great Powers.  Something like this has been recently happening in China.

To a certain extent this line of action seems to be necessary in dealing with backward countries, and it may be made mutually beneficial both to those countries themselves and to the commerce of the Great Powers, but, on the other hand, the whole policy is obviously liable to great abuse.  Consequently, every self-respecting Government knows that all matters relating to concessions must be treated with the greatest caution and forbearance, and that the interests of all concerned will be best served in the long run by gradually helping backward countries along the path of civilisation and strengthening their Governments so that they may be able to assume complete control of their own finance and commercial enterprises.

We have now described roughly the personal and the commercial work of the Foreign Office.  This work covers all the immediate interests of individual British citizens in regard to foreign countries.  If each British subject is protected when abroad, and if the trade and industry of the country on which the welfare and livelihood of every individual citizen ultimately depends is fostered and safe-guarded, then the primary duties of the British Government in relation to other Governments have been discharged.

But this is not enough.  If the interests of the individual citizen of Great Britain are to be permanently secured in relation to foreign countries, we must be assured that the policy of foreign Governments is civilised and generally friendly to British subjects.  There must be a general rule of law throughout the world on which British subjects can count with assurance of safety.  And so the Foreign Office has a third and even more important class of work: 

(3) The maintenance of permanent good relations with foreign countries.  These good relations are secured, not only by continually friendly communication with foreign Governments over innumerable questions of policy, but also by the conclusion of a network of treaties, some of them designed to establish international co-operation in particular social or economic questions such, for instance, as the existing treaty between Great Britain and France providing for the mutual