ABSTRACT
The primary fact of international politics is the contact between governments, each regarded as supreme in regard to a particular group of persons or a particular territory. These governments are the executive organs of the several states, and, therefore, their action is taken to be the action of the states, while the people governed are supposed, in some sense, to be the state or to be represented by the state. The peoples of the world, then, come into contact through the states and their governments. In legal and diplomatic language all states are equal, since all are equally sovereign; but their equality is as limited in its effects as the almost fictitious equality of the rich and the poor within any state. In fact, all international politics is affected by the distinction between Great Powers and other states; for in practice the Great Powers control the international situation. When their representatives agree, the opinion of the other states is negligible, and when their representatives disagree, the problem becomes only one of the amount of wealth and power on either side among the Great Powers. This situation prevails when the question is obviously international, touching practically all parts of the world; but if the question is local or restricted in interest, the small states of the locality affected naturally have their say. Thus the Great Powers are international organisations either singly or as a group, while the smaller states tend to become satellites of these or are only local organisations.
