BRITAIN'S FOREIGN POLICY.

Nelson Evening Mail, Volume XXII, Issue 138, 14 June 1888, Page 2

BRITAIN'S FOREIGN POLICY.

Speaking at Carnarvon in April last, Lord I Salisbury described what the Government considered to he the right foreign policy of Great Britain as follows :— " We think that a nation like ours should behave to other nations just as a man should behave to neighbors and equals among whom he may chance to be dwelling. If you wish to get on with tha people with whom you are living you must not be looking for perpetual opportunities of getting a little advantage over them : you must view yonr own claims and theirs in a just and neighborly spirit — on the one hand never sacrificing any important and genuine right in respect to whioh you think that oppression or en croaohment is being attempted, and on the other hand abstaining from erecting controversies into envenomed disputes and treating every difference as a matter of vital principle. The people who do those thiags in private lif «t and in diplomacy may secure an advantage or two at first, but directly their temper is discovered' by their neighbors they will find that they are opposed by a combination of these neighbours which places them in a worse position than if they had never insisted on their rights. I must add that what I call my neighbourly view of foreign politics extends beyond the mere con» troversies or disputes or discussions we may have with our neighbours. We must not only deal with them in a spirit of goodwill, recognising the necessity of concessions on the one side or the other, but we must also recognise that the members of every community have duties towards eaoh other. We are part of what has been well called the I federation of mankind ', We belong to a great community of nations, and we have no right to shrink from the duties which the interests of the country impose upon us. There is all the difference in the world between good«natured, good-humoured effort to keep well with your neighbours, and that spirit of haughty and sullen isolation wnioh has been dighified by the name of 'nonintervention.' We are part of the community of Europe, and we must do our duty as such. We must strive to take that place and to obtain that great and just object of foreign policy — the permanence of peace, in which industry and prosperity may thrive."