The terrible events which are passing to-day ripen and sharpen this
issue. They bring into powerful relief the inherent defects of an
international polity based upon the absolute independence of the several
states, and the futile mechanical balances and readjustments by which
foreign policy has been conducted hitherto. But how far do they offer
assistance or security for the achievement of organic reform? After this
war has come to a close, will the nations and governments be enabled to
lay a sound basis for pacific settlement of disputes and for active
co-operation in the common cause of humanity for the future? No
confident answer to this question is possible. For nobody can predict
the composition and the relative strength of the feelings and ideas
which will constitute 'the state of mind' of the several nations and
their statesmen. As regards immediate or early policy, much will, of
course, depend upon the definiteness of the victory and defeat, and the
consequent distribution and intensity of the passions of elation and
depression, anger and revenge, which peace may leave behind. It is, of
course, part of the fighting strength of every belligerent to persuade
himself that an overwhelming victory for himself affords the best
security of peace and progress in the future. But this conclusion, based
on the prior assumption, equally liable to error, that one's own cause
is entirely right and one's enemy's entirely wrong, is unlikely to be
sound. A peace which brings the least intensity of triumph and
humiliation, the most even distribution of gains and losses, would seem
to give an atmosphere most favourable to the growth of pacific
internationalism. This, of course, will be sharply contested, and those
who contest it will exhibit the usual excessive confidence of those
whose mind moves in a shut oven of heated but unmeaning phrases about
fighting to a finish, crushing German militarism, and 'a war to end
war'. But there is no stronger evidence of the intellectual and moral