navy.[32:1]

But the real cost of war does not fall upon the individual nation. And
for the last time let me say that I am not arguing against Germany: I am
arguing for Peace. It has been necessary to discuss Germany's position
because she is at the moment the only factor in the situation which
makes for war. All other Powers are satisfied, or could be satisfied,
with their present boundaries. Outside of the German Empire, the whole
civilised world earnestly desires peace. It may be that Great Britain,
acting in concert with France, Russia, and Japan, will in the near
future be able to take a longer step towards securing that peace for the
world than seems at present credible. But England's natural coadjutor is
the United States. The United States has but to take one step and the
thing is done. It is a _role_ which ought to appeal to the American
people. It is certainly one for the assumption of which all posterity
would bless the name of America.

* * * * *

Critics will, of course, ridicule this offhand dismissing in a few
sentences of the largest of world problems. Each one of several
propositions which I have advanced breaks rudely ground where angels
might fear to tread; each one ought to be put forth cautiously with much
preamble and historical introduction, to be circuitously argued through
several hundred pages; but that cannot be done here because those
propositions are not the main topic of this book. At the same time they
must be stated, however baldly, because they represent the basis on
which my plea for any immediate Anglo-American co-operation in the cause
of peace must rest.

I am also fully conscious of the hostility which almost everything that
I say will provoke from one or another section of the American people,
but I am not addressing the irreconcilables of any foreign element of
the population of the United States. I am talking to the reasoning,
intelligent mass of the two peoples as a whole. The subject of an
Anglo-American alliance is one of which it is the fashion to hush up any
attempt at the discussion in public. It must be spoken of in whispers.
It is better--so the argument runs--to let American good-will to England
grow of itself; an effort to hasten it will but hurt American
susceptibilities.

In the first place this idea rests largely on an exaggerated estimate of
the power of the Irish politician, a power which happily is coming every
day to be more