ABSTRACT
The chief, the overwhelming problem of diplomacy seems to be the weak state—the Balkans, the African sultanates, Turkey, China, and Latin America, with the possible exception of the Argentine, Chile, and Brazil. Just as the chief task of American politics to the Civil War was the organization of the unexploited West, so the chief task of world diplomacy to-day is the organization of virgin territory and backward peoples. The weak spots of the world are the arenas of friction. This friction is increased and made popular by frontier disputes over Alsace-Lorraine or Italia Irredenta, but in my judgment the boundary lines of Europe are not the grand causes of diplomatic struggle. Signor Ferrero confessed recently that the present generation of Italians had all but forgotten Italia Irredenta, and the Revanche has been a decadent French dream until the Entente and the Dual Alliance began to clash in Morocco, in Turkey, in China.
