powers would be removed, since
every reason for it would have vanished? Thus the necessary and
advantageous tutelage of Europe over the non-European world, and the
continuance of the great world-states, could be combined with the
conjuring away of the ever-present terror of war, and with the gradual
training of the non-European peoples to enjoy the political methods of
Europe; while the lesser states without extra-European dominions need
no longer feel themselves stunted and reduced to economic dependence
upon their great neighbours. Thus, and thus alone, can the benefits of
the long development which we have traced be reaped in full; thus alone
can the dominion of the European peoples over the world be made to mean
justice and the chance for all peoples to make the best of their powers.

But it is not only the principles upon which particular areas outside
of Europe should be governed which we must consider. We must reflect
also upon the nature of the relations that should exist between the
various members of these great world-empires, which must hence-forward
be the dominating factors in the world's politics. And here the problem
is urgent only in the case of the British Empire, because it alone is
developed to such a point that the problem is inevitably raised.
Whatever else may happen, the war must necessarily bring a crisis in
the history of the British Empire. On a vastly greater scale the
situation of 1763 is being reproduced. Now, as then, the Empire will
emerge from a war for existence, in which mother and daughter lands
alike have shared. Now, as then, the strain and pressure of the war
will have brought to light deficiencies in the system of the Empire.
Now, as then, the most patent of these deficiencies will be the fact
that, generous as the self-governing powers of the great Dominions have
been, they still have limits; and the irresistible tendency of
self-government to work towards its own fulfilment will once more show
itself. For there are two spheres in which even the most fully
self-governing of the empire-nations have no effective control: they do
not share in the determination of foreign policy, and they do not share
in the direction of imperial defence. The responsibility for foreign
policy, and the responsibility, and with it almost the whole burden, of
organising imperial defence, have hitherto rested solely with Britain.
Until the Great War, foreign policy seemed to be a matter of purely
Europea