effect the change would have on foreign policy.  If the democracy is to take a real part in foreign politics, it must recognise that great responsibilities mean great sacrifices.  We must be content to think a little less of our internal social reform, and give more of our attention to the very difficult questions which arise beyond the Channel and beyond the Atlantic Ocean.  We must live constantly in the consciousness that the world to-day is one community, and that in everything we do as a people we bear a responsibility not to ourselves alone but to the population of the British Empire as a whole and to the family of nations.

But when we have really set ourselves to understand and discharge the responsibilities of foreign policy, how shall we, the people of this country, make our opinions effective?  How can we be sure that the Foreign Office will carry out a policy corresponding to the considered convictions which we as a people have formed?

As already stated, we have in our hands the same means of Parliamentary control over foreign policy as over internal policy.  Parliament can overthrow a Government whose policy it disapproves, and it can refuse to grant supplies for the carrying out of such a policy.  Short of this, the people can express through Parliament its views as to the way in which foreign policy should be conducted, and generally Ministers will bow, in this as in other matters, to the clearly expressed views of Parliament.  We have, in fact, recently seen a striking example of this.  When after the international crisis of 1911 the country clearly expressed the opinion that no secret engagements should be entered into with any Power which would force Great Britain to go to war in support of that Power, the Prime Minister stated, and has repeated his statement emphatically on several subsequent occasions, that the Government of this country neither had entered, nor would enter, into any such secret engagements, and that any treaty entailing warlike obligations on this country would be laid before Parliament.  This has now become a fixed and recognised fact in British policy, and it is not too much to say that, like other constitutional changes under the British system of government, it is rapidly becoming a part of the unwritten constitution of the country.

But many people would like to go beyond this, and lay down that no treaty between Great Britain and another country shall be valid until it has been voted by Parliament.  Many countries have provisions of this kind in their constitutions; for instance, the constitution of the United States provides that all treaties must be ratified by a two-thirds majority of the Senate, and the French constitution contains the following provision: 

“The President of the Republic negotiates and ratifies treaties.  He brings them to the knowledge of the Chamber so soon as the interests and the safety of the State permit.

“Treaties of peace and of commerce, treaties which impose a claim on the finances of the State, those which relate to the personal status and property rights of French subjects abroad, do not become valid until they have been voted by the two Chambers.  No cession, exchange, or increase of territory can take place except by virtue of a law.”