the harder because, though very often they are utterly incompetent, they are so self-conceited that, without the slightest justification, they look down with disdain on ordinary commonsense people. These arrogant snobs who pretend to know better than other people, are wholly incapable of calmly and coolly analysing a problem and weighing its pros and cons, which are the necessary preliminaries of any decision or action in the field of foreign politics.