The power of the State does not rest exclusively on the factors that make up material power--territory, population, wealth, and a large army and navy: it rests to a high degree on moral elements, which are reciprocally related to the material.

The energy with which a State promotes its own interests and represents the rights of its citizens in foreign States, the determination which it displays to support them on occasion by force of arms, constitute a real factor of strength, as compared with all such countries as cannot bring themselves to let things come to a crisis in a like case.

Similarly a reliable and honourable policy forms an element of strength in dealings with allies as well as with foes.

A statesman is thus under no obligation to deceive deliberately.

He can from the political standpoint avoid all negotiations which compromise his personal integrity, and he will thereby serve the reputation and power of his State no less than when he holds aloof from political menaces, to which no acts correspond, and renounces all political formulas and phrases.
In antiquity the murder of a tyrant was thought a moral action, and the Jesuits have tried to justify regicide.[K] At the present day political murder is universally condemned from the standpoint of political morality.