er to take up
the cudgel. And a "peace" that did not rehabilitate industrial Belgium,
Poland, and the north of France would call imperatively for the
imposition upon the Allies of a system of tariffs in the interests of
these countries, and for a bitter economic "war after the war" against
Germany. That restoration is, of course, an implicit condition to any
attempt to set up an economic peace in the world.

These things being arranged for the future, it would be further
necessary to set up an International Boundary Commission, subject to
certain defining conditions agreed upon by the belligerents, to re-draw
the map of Europe, Asia, and Africa. This war does afford an occasion
such as the world may never have again of tracing out the "natural map"
of mankind, the map that will secure the maximum of homogeneity and the
minimum of racial and economic freedom. All idealistic people hope for
a restored Poland. But it is a childish thing to dream of a contented
Poland with Posen still under the Prussian heel, with Cracow cut off,
and without a Baltic port. These claims of Poland to completeness have a
higher sanction than the mere give and take of belligerents in congress.

Moreover this International Tribunal, if it was indeed to prevent war,
would need also to have power to intervene in the affairs of any country
or region in a state of open and manifest disorder, for the protection
of foreign travellers and of persons and interests localised in that
country but foreign to it.

Such an agreement as I have here sketched out would at once lift
international politics out of the bloody and hopeless squalor of
the present conflict. It is, I venture to assert, the peace of the
reasonable man in any country whatever. But it needs the attention
of such a disengaged people as the American people to work it out and
supply it with--weight. It needs putting before the world with some sort
of authority greater than its mere entire reasonableness. Otherwise
it will not come before the minds of ordinary men with the effect of a
practicable proposition. I do not see any such plant springing from the
European battlefields. It is America's supreme opportunity. And yet it
is the common sense of the situation, and the solution that must satisfy
a rational German as completely as a rational Frenchman or Englishman.
It has nothing against it but the prejudice against new and entirely
novel things.

3

In throwing out the suggestion tha