ar, the whole fate and future of the now unified world is at stake.
For just because the world is now, as never before, an indissoluble
economic and political unity, the challenge of Germany, whatever view
we may take of the immediate aims of the German state, inevitably
raises the whole question of the principles upon which this unified
world, unified by the victory of European civilisation, is to be in
future directed. And the whole world knows, if vaguely, that these vast
issues are at stake, and that this is no merely European conflict. That
is why we see arrayed upon the fields of battle not only French,
British, Russian, Italian, Serbian, Belgian, Rumanian, Greek and
Portuguese soldiers, but Canadians, Australians, New Zealanders, South
Africans, Indians, Algerians, Senegalese, Cambodians; and now,
alongside of all these, the citizens of the American Republic. That is
why Brazil and other states are hovering on the edge of the fray; why
Japanese ships are helping to patrol the Mediterranean, why Arab armies
are driving the Turk from the holy places of Mahomedanism, why African
tribesmen are enrolled in new levies to clear the enemy out of his
footholds in that continent. Almost the whole world is arrayed against
the outlaw-power and her vassals. And the ultimate reason for this is
that the whole world is concerned to see this terrible debate rightly
determined.

[10] In Nationalism and Internationalism and in National
Self-Government.

For the issue is as simple as this. Now that the world has been made
one by the victory of Western civilisation, in what spirit is that
supremacy to be used? Is it to be in the spirit expressed in the German
Doctrine of Power, the spirit of mere dominion, ruthlessly imposed and
ruthlessly exploited for the sole advantage of the master-power? That
way ruin lies. Or is it to be in the spirit which has on the whole, and
in spite of lapses, guided the progress of Western civilisation in the
past, the spirit of respect for law and for the rights of the weak, the
spirit of liberty which rejoices in variety of type and method, and
which believes that the destiny towards which all peoples should be
guided is that of self-government in freedom, and the co-operation of
free peoples in the maintenance of common interests? Britain, France,
and America have been the great advocates and exponents of these
principles in the government of their own states: they are all ranged
on one side to-d