did more for the principle of nationality than any of the other diplomatists of the time.  The reason why Canning broke with the Holy Alliance, after Troppau, Laibach, and Verona, was because he discerned something more than a tendency on the part of Continental States to crush the free development of peoples, especially in reference to the Latin-American States of South America.  It is true that in these matters he and his successor were guided by a shrewd notion of British interest, but it would be hardly just to blame them on this account.  “You know my politics well enough,” wrote Canning in 1822 to the British Ambassador in St. Petersburg, “to know what I mean when I say that for Europe I should be desirous now and then to read England.”  Castlereagh was, no doubt, more conciliatory than Canning, but he saw the fundamental difficulty of organising an international system and yet holding the balance between conflicting nations.  And thus we get to a result such as seems to have rejoiced the heart of Canning, when he said in 1823 that “the issue of Verona has split the one and indivisible alliance into three parts as distinct as the constitutions of England, France, and Muscovy.”  “Things are getting back,” he added, “to a wholesome state again.  Every nation for itself and God for us all.  Only bid your Emperor (Alexander I) be quiet, for the time for Areopagus and the like of that is gone by."[8]

[8] The Confederation of Europe, by W.A.  Phillips, p. 280.

EARTHEN VESSELS

If, then, the ardent hopes of a regenerated Europe in the early years of the nineteenth century failed, the result was due in large measure to the fact that the business was committed to wrong hands.  The organs for working the change were for the most part autocratic monarchs and old-world diplomatists—­the last people in the world likely to bring about a workable millennium.  A great crisis demands very careful manipulation.  Cynicism must not be allowed to play any part in it.  Traditional watchwords are not of much use.  Theoretical idealism itself may turn out to be a most formidable stumbling-block.  Yet no one can doubt that a solution of the problem, whenever it is arrived at, must come along the path of idealism.  Long ago a man of the world was defined as a man who in every serious crisis is invariably wrong.  He is wrong because he applies old-fashioned experience to a novel situation—­old wine in new bottles—­and because he has no faith in generous aspirations, having noted their continuous failure in the past.  Yet, after all, it is only faith which can move mountains, and the Holy Alliance itself was not so much wrong in the principles to which it appealed as it was in the personages who signed it.  We have noticed already that, like all other great ideas, it did not wholly die.  The propaganda of peace, however futile may be some of the discussions of pacifists, is the heritage which