nal vanity and her world ambitions have made
for her, that is what we have to make clear now. It is not only our duty
to mankind, it is also the sane course for our own preservation.

Is it not the plain lesson of this stupendous and disastrous war that
there is no way to secure civilization from destruction except by an
impartial control and protection in the interests of the whole human
race, a control representing the best intelligence of mankind, of these
main causes of war.

(1) The politically undeveloped tropics;

(2) Shipping and international trade; and

(3) Small nationalities and all regions in a state of political
impotence or confusion?

It is our case against the Germans that in all these three cases they
have subordinated every consideration of justice and the general human
welfare to a monstrous national egotism. That argument has a double
edge. At present there is a vigorous campaign in America, Russia, the
neutral countries generally, to represent British patriotism as equally
egotistic, and our purpose in this war as a mere parallel to the German
purpose. In the same manner, though perhaps with less persistency,
France and Italy are also caricatured. We are supposed to be grabbing at
Mesopotamia and Palestine, France at Syria; Italy is represented as
pursuing a Machiavellian policy towards the unfortunate Greek
republicans, with her eyes on the Greek islands and Greece in Asia. Is
it not time that these base imputations were repudiated clearly and
conclusively by our Alliance? And is it not time that we began to
discuss in much more frank and definite terms than has hitherto been
done, the nature of the international arrangement that will be needed to
secure the safety of such liberated populations as those of Palestine,
of the Arab regions of the old Turkish empire, of Armenia, of reunited
Poland, and the like?

I do not mean here mere diplomatic discussions and "understandings," I
mean such full and plain statements as will be spread through the whole
world and grasped and assimilated by ordinary people everywhere,
statements by which we, as a people, will be prepared to stand or fall.

Almost as urgent is the need for some definite statement about Africa.
General Smuts has warned not only the Empire, but the whole world of the
gigantic threat to civilization that lies in the present division of
Africa between various keenly competitive European Powers, any one of
which will be free to misus