, the history of the Channel fortifications, of the
Volunteer force and of several other great and often costly
institutions, bears witness. Let us therefore take thought while there
is time to do so. We do not wish to see repeated anything analogous to
our former experience. The one thing that can avert it is the spirit in
which a League of Nations has been brought to birth. That spirit alone
can preclude the gradual nascence of desire to call into existence a new
balance of power. It is not enough to tell Germany and Austria that if
they behave well they will be admitted to the League of Nations. What
really matters is the feeling and manner in which the invitation is
given, and an obvious sincerity in the desire that they should work with
us as equals in a common endeavor to make the best of a world which
contains us both. One is quite conscious of the difficulties that must
attend the attempt to approach the question in the frame of mind that is
requisite. We may have to discipline ourselves considerably. But the
people of this country are capable of reflection, and so are the people
of the American Continent. The problem to be solved is one that presses
on our great Allies in the United States, where the German-speaking
population is very large, quite as much as it does on us. France and
Belgium have more to forgive, and France has a hard past from which to
avert her eyes. But she is a country of great intelligence, and it is
for the sake of everybody, and not merely in the interest of our recent
enemies, that enlargement of the spirit is requisite.

How the present situation is to be softened, how the people of the
Central Powers are to be brought to feel that they are not to remain
divided from us by an impassable gulf, this is not the occasion to
suggest. It is enough to repeat that the question is not one simply of
the letter of a treaty but is one of the spirit in which it is made.
Conditions change in this world with a rapidity that is often startling.
The fashion of the day passes before we know that what is novel and was
unexpected has come upon us. The foundations of a peace that is to be
enduring must therefore be sought in what is highest and most abiding in
human nature.

INDEX

Agadir incident, the, 68

Algeciras Conference, the, 69, 114

Alsace-Lorraine, question of, 114
the Kaiser on, 52, 53

America, Tschirsky on, 60

Anglo-French Entente, Buelow on, 56
Tschirsky, 59
views of