In the second half of the seventeenth century, European philosophers began to regard the enlightenment of ignorant and prejudiced people as a means of reducing persecution and of promoting just and reasonable government. In international affairs, the first dramatic application of this doctrine occurred during the wars of the French Revolution when diplomacy, the traditional form of elite communication, was supplemented by missionary appeals to the common man on the enemy side. Since that time, the technology of communication has greatly improved; ever larger literate masses of the population participate in politics and war; the social homogeneity of the political elites in various nations has been lost, and in the West the ideas of liberty and equality have been drained of their revolutionary power.