the outer world would very swiftly begin to revise
its judgment as to the value of that civilisation which it has, upon
the whole, been ready to welcome; and chaos would soon come again.

Finally, it is possible that the Evil Power may be utterly routed, and
the allied empires, tried by fire, may be given the opportunity and the
obligation of making, not merely a new Europe, but a new world. If that
chance should come, how will they use it? One thing at least is clear.
The task which will face the diplomats who take part in the coming
peace-congress will be different in kind as well as in degree from that
of any of their predecessors at any moment in human history. They will
be concerned not merely with the adjustment of the differences of a few
leading states, and not merely with the settlement of Europe: they will
have to deal with the whole world, and to decide upon what principles
and to what ends the leadership of the peoples of European stock over
the non-European world is to be exercised. Whether they realise it or
not, whether they intend it or not, they will create either a
world-order or a world-disorder. And it will inevitably be a
world-disorder which will result unless we do some hard thinking on
this gigantic problem which faces us, and unless we are prepared to
learn, from the history of the relations of Europe with the outer
world, what are the principles by which we ought to be guided. We are
too prone, when we think of the problems of the future peace, to fix
our attention almost wholly upon Europe, and, if we think of the
non-European world at all, to assume either that the problem is merely
one of power, or that the principles which will guide us in the
settlement of Europe can be equally applied outside of Europe. Both of
these assumptions are dangerous, because both disregard the teachings
of the past which we have been surveying.

If, on the one hand, we are content to regard the problem as merely one
of power, and to divide out the non-European world among the victors as
the spoils of victory, we shall indeed have been conquered by the very
spirit which we are fighting; we shall have become converts to the
German Doctrine of Power, which has brought upon us all these ills, and
may bring yet more appalling evils in the future. The world will emerge
divided among a group of vast empires which will overshadow the lesser
states. These empires will continue to regard one another with fear and
suspici