rm each of the states on which it
is imposed into a miniature Balkans, to keep Europe in continuous
turmoil and hinder the growth of the new and creative ideas from which
alone one could expect that union of collective energy with individual
freedom which is essential to peace and progress. Modern history affords
no more striking example of the force of abstract bias over the
teachings of experience than this amateur legislation which is
scattering seeds of mischief and conflict throughout Europe.

* * * * *

Casting a final glance at the results of the Conference, it would be
ungracious not to welcome as a precious boon the destruction of Prussian
militarism, a consummation which we owe to the heroism of the armies
rather than to the sagacity of the lawgivers in Paris. The restoration
of a Polish state and the creation or extension of the other free
communities at the expense of the Central Empires are also most welcome
changes, which, however, ought never to have been marred by the
disruptive wedge of the minority legislation. Again, although the League
is a mill whose sails uselessly revolve, because it has no corn to
grind, the mere fact that the necessity of internationalism was solemnly
proclaimed as the central idea of the new ordering, and that an effort,
however feeble, was put forth to realize it in the shape of a covenant
of social and moral fellowship, marks an advance from which there can be
no retrogression.

Actuality was thereby imparted to the idea, which is destined to remain
in the forefront of contemporary politics until the peoples themselves
embody it in viable institutions. What the delegates failed to realize
is the truth that a program of a league is not a league.

On the debit side much might be added to what has already been said. The
important fact to bear in mind--which in itself calls for neither praise
nor blame--is that the world-parliament was at bottom an Anglo-Saxon
assembly whose language, political conceptions, self-esteem, and
disregard of everything foreign were essentially English. When speaking,
the faces of the principal delegates were turned toward the future, and
when acting they looked toward the past. As a thoroughly English press
organ, when alluding to the League of Nations, puts it: "We have done
homage to that entrancing ideal by spatchcocking the Convention into the
Treaty. There it remains as a finger-post to point the way to a new
he