ether different in
effect as well as in spirit from a world settlement made primarily to
establish a new phase in the history of mankind.

Let me take three instances of the impossibility of complete victory
_on either side_ giving a solution satisfactory to the conscience and
intelligence of reasonable men.

The first--on which I will not expatiate, for everyone knows of its
peculiar difficulty--is Poland.

The second is a little one, but one that has taken hold of my
imagination. In the settlement of boundaries preceding this war the
boundary between Serbia and north-eastern Albania was drawn with an
extraordinary disregard of the elementary needs of the Albanians of that
region. It ran along the foot of the mountains which form their summer
pastures and their refuge from attack, and it cut their mountains off
from their winter pastures and market towns. Their whole economic life
was cut to pieces and existence rendered intolerable for them. Now an
intelligent Third Party settling Europe would certainly restore these
market towns, Ipek, Jakova, and Prisrend, to Albania. But the Albanians
have no standing in this war; theirs is the happy lot that might have
fallen to Belgium had she not resisted; the war goes to and fro through
Albania; and when the settlement comes, it is highly improbable that
the slightest notice will be taken of Albania's plight in the region. In
which case these particular Albanians will either be driven into exile
to America or they will be goaded to revolt, which will be followed no
doubt by the punitive procedure usual in the Balkan peninsula.

For my third instance I would step from a matter as small as three
market towns and the grazing of a few thousand head of sheep to a matter
as big as the world. What is going to happen to the shipping of the
world after this war? The Germans, with that combination of cunning
and stupidity which baffles the rest of mankind, have set themselves to
destroy the mercantile marine not merely of Britain and France but of
Norway and Sweden, Holland, and all the neutral countries. The German
papers openly boast that they are building up a big mercantile marine
that will start out to take up the world's overseas trade directly peace
is declared. Every such boast receives careful attention in the British
press. We have heard a very great deal about the German will-to-power
in this war, but there is something very much older and tougher and less
blatant and cons