e to be now at this moment as good
a definition as we can have of our European policy--the idea of public
right. What does it mean when translated into concrete terms? It means,
first and foremost, the clearing of the ground by the definite repudiation
of militarism as the governing factor in the relation of states and of the
future moulding of the European world. It means next that room must be
found and kept for the independent existence and the free development of
the smaller nationalities, each with a corporate consciousness of its
own.... And it means, finally, or it ought to mean, perhaps, by a slow and
gradual process, the substitution for force, for the clash of competing
ambition, for groupings and alliances, of a real European partnership
based on the recognition of equal right and established and enforced by a
common will."[6]

Much the same language has been used by Sir Edward Grey and by Mr. Winston
Churchill.

[6] _The Times_, September 26.

A COMMON WILL

Observe that there are three points here. In the first place--if I do not
misapprehend Mr. Asquith's drift--in working for the abolition of
militarism, we are working for a great diminution in those armaments which
have become a nightmare to the modern world. The second point is that we
have to help in every fashion small nationalities, or, in other words,
that we have to see that countries like Belgium, Holland, Switzerland, the
Scandinavian countries, Greece and the Balkan States, and, perhaps, more
specially, the Slav nationalities shall have a free chance in Europe,
shall "have their place in the sun," and not be browbeaten and raided and
overwhelmed by their powerful neighbours. And the third point, perhaps
more important than all, is the creation of what Mr. Asquith calls a
"European partnership based on the recognition of equal right and
established and enforced by a common will." We have to recognise that
there is such a thing as public right; that there is such a thing as
international morality, and that the United States of Europe have to keep
as their ideal the affirmation of this public right, and to enforce it by
a common will. That creation of a common will is at once the most
difficult and the most imperative thing of all. Every one must be aware
how difficult it is. We know, for instance, how the common law is enforced
in any specified state, because it has a "sanction," or, in other words,
because those who break it can be punished