n all time; and I most earnestly believe that it only
needs that they should say with one voice that there shall be no more
wars and there will be none. Nor am I ignoring the complexities of the
situation; but I believe that all the details, the first step once
taken, would settle themselves with unexpected facility through the
medium of international tribunals. Of course this will be called
visionary: but whosoever is tempted so to call it, let him read history
in the records of contemporary writers and see how visionary all great
forward movements in the progress of the world have seemed until the
time came when the thing was to be accomplished. What we are now
discussing seems visionary because of its unfamiliarity. It has the
formidableness of the unknown. The impossible, once accomplished, looks
simple enough in retrospect. The fact is that never before has there
been a time when boundaries all over the world have been so nearly
established--when there were so few points outstanding likely to embroil
any two of the Great Powers in conflict--so few national ambitions
struggling for appeasement. It is easy not to realise this unless one
studies the field in detail: easy to fail to see how near is the
attainment of universal peace.

The Councils of the Powers have in the past been so hampered by the
traditions of a tortuous diplomacy, so tossed and perturbed within by
the cross-currents of intrigue, that they have shown themselves almost
childishly incapable of arriving at clear-cut decisions. Old policies,
old formulae, old jealousies, old dynastic influences still hold control
of the majority of the chancelleries of Continental Europe, and these
things it is that have made questions simple in themselves seem complex
and incapable of solution. But there is nothing to be settled involving
larger territorial interests or more beset with delicacies than many
questions with which the Supreme Court of the United States has had to
deal--none so large as to seem formidable to his Majesty's Privy Council
or to the House of Lords. And under the guidance of Great Britain and
the United States acting in unison, assured in advance of the sympathy
of France and Japan and of whatever other Powers would welcome the new
order of things, a Hague committee or other international tribunal could
be made a businesslike organisation working directly for results,--as
directly as the board of directors of any commercial corporation. And it