"DOCTRINE AND ACTION"                   
 
By His Excellency Dr. Antonio de 0liveira Salazar  
                 Prime Minister of Portugal                 
 
                       EXTRACTS FROM                        
 
                       Pages 379-384                        
 
                                                            
 
 
In Europe some States have been dismembered, others were  
proclaimed independent, frontiers have been altered and vast territories   
transferred, nations have been absorbed and given a different shape,  
and as a result of all this the strategic value and military capacity of   
some countries have been seriously modified. As soon as some problems   
appeared to be settled, others took their places bringing fresh   
perturbations in their train, and it seemed that the loss of the   
existing stability, precarious as it was, must result in a complete   
revision of the map of Europe. It would be an obvious exaggeration to   
believe this, but the unrest which has taken possession of men's minds   
has converted every conjecture, even the most absurd, into a possible   
              source of misgiving and danger.               
 
      We will begin by examining the methods employed.      
 
                                                            
 
 
The old conventions of diplomacy have been shelved andthe    
             former methods are entirely discredited.. The tone of a Note,  
             the protest by a Chancellery, the withdrawl of a diplomatist,  
 the unexpected arrival of a battleship or a squadron, a frontier  
             incident or the partial mobilization of an Army have lost their  
             former significance, or at least no one now seems to attach any  
             importance to such things. The old diplomacy, discreetly cor-  
             rect and silent, having been replaced by the diplomacy of the  
             open vote, of which the League of Nations was the chief and most  
             lamentable example, we have now gone on to a system which we  
             may describe as that of direct action, feverish in its methods,  
             high-handed in action, fond of plebiscites and oratorical crowd  
             suggestion. The attention of the world is fixed on the pronouncr-  
             men~s of its great public men, and we are so nervous that we                                                       .  
             spend anxious days waiting for one of their speeches and believe  
             that it must spell peace or war. This could never be so, but  
             the mere fact of our anxiety shows on how precarious a basis we  
                         consider peace to rest.            
 
                                                            
 
 
An unbridled, publicity, which may be merely stupid, or may be very   
intelligent and malicious, scrutinizes every attitude, gives a special   
meaning to things which are insignificant, misrepresents the purest   
intentions, distorts the clearest thought, inflames