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"What is the English system?" Frederick the Great was asked. "The English," he barked, "have no system." That "no system" has been a system in itself. Britain's foreign policy has been dictated not by planned ambition (e.g., Germany with its Drang nach Osten), by preoccupation with a single enemy (e.g., the French fear of the Germans), or frequent declaration of high-minded and distant goals (e.g., the U.S.). British policy has been to keep the sea lanes open, the trade doors open (at least to itself), and to balance world power by chipping away at any state or group of states that threatened to tip it. British diplomatic tactics have been to avoid long-range commitments, deal with problems only as they arise, seek not "solutions" but "adjustments," which can be counted on to last for perhaps ten years.
It was a policy which Lord Salisbury once characterized as "floating lazily downstream, occasionally putting out a diplomatic boat hook to avoid collision." A Socialist who had held high position in the Foreign Office said to an American correspondent last week: "We were like you once. When things really get tough, you just say, 'Oh well, a hundred million dollars will settle it.' In our case, it was cruisers. Some of the most awful mistakes were made, but then we would send around a couple of cruisers."
Boat hooks, cruisers and skilled diplomats can no longer save Britain from frightening collisions. It has been booted ignominiously from Iran, set upon in Egypt, ambushed in Malaya, even sniped at by Argentina. Burma has left the Commonwealth, Ceylon is thinking of leaving. Six of the great overseas Dominions are now as sovereign as Britain itself, legally bound to the mother island only by the thread of mutual allegiance to the Crown. India, though a Dominion, does not even recognize the Crown. Except for short periods, Britain has been unable to pay its way since 1918. At an alarming rate, its once-rich holdings overseas have gone.
But the ledger is not all in red ink. Britain still controls some 50 strategic colonies, territories and protectorates, totaling 7,068,170 square miles and 83,000,000 people, from Hong Kong to Basutoland to Trinidad. Also on the ledger, though written in invisible ink, is the abiding loyalty of its Dominions: Britain can count on them to help fight its battles and ward off its bankruptcy. An empire which, having lost so much, is still able to hold so much, still has some kind of toughness and durability in its diplomacy.