f Alsace-Lorraine votes
to become French, whole districts, which will have voted to remain
German, will be dissatisfied. Moreover, in the latter case, should all
the residents of the two provinces be permitted to vote or only those
people and their descendants who were living there in 1870? If the
first plan is adopted a premium is placed upon the policy of legally
dispossessing the inhabitants of a conquered land and filling their
places with loyal _immigres_; if the latter is chosen, the principle of
the right of a population to determine its allegiance is abandoned.
Finally, if the decision of the population of the disputed district
were adverse to the interests of Europe as a whole, it would be
irrational to validate such a result. The interests of Europe are
superior to those of any nation, however powerful, and vastly superior
to those of a Luxemburg, Ulster or Alsace-Lorraine.

{288}

CHAPTER XXI

AN IMMEDIATE PROGRAMME

To the practical man who wants to know what to do and when and how to
do it, general principles seem unreal and valueless. He is interested
in the decisions of the next few months, not in a vague general
direction of events for the coming century. And so in international
politics he would like to decide what the nation shall do _now_ about
the British blacklist, the German submarines, the Mexican revolution,
the California-Japanese situation, and he is not keenly interested in
the formulation of a policy which seems to hang high above the
difficult concrete problems that must be solved immediately. He may
languidly agree with proposals to create a community of interest among
colonising nations and to establish the freedom of the sea, but he
wishes to know whether in the meanwhile we are to back up Carranza in
Mexico and what we are to do if the revolutionists "shoot up" an
American town. While we work for these ideals, are we to allow Germany
to sink our liners and Japan to swallow up China, or are we to fight?

This attitude is not unreasonable. A general policy is of little value
unless we can make successive decisions conform to it. But it is not
easy or always possible to predict these decisions. We can tell
approximately how many people in the United States will die next year,
but not how many will die in any particular family. We can {289}
advise a man who is walking from New York to San Francisco to take a
generally westward course, but for any given mile of the road