Politics can be fair when history pauses to catch its breath, but at critical turning points there is no other standard than the old proposition that the end justifies the means. We were the ones who introduced neo-Machiavellianism into this century; the others, the counterrevolutionary dictators, offered crude imitations. Our neo-Machiavellianism was on behalf of cosmopolitan reason—that was our greatness; theirs is in the name of a limited, nationalistic romanticism—that is their anachronism. Therefore in the end we will be absolved by history, and they will not . . .
