tile groups, the one standing on the defensive against the
warlike machinations of the other, and both groups bidding for the favor
of those minor Powers whose traditions and current aspirations run to
national (dynastic) aggrandizement by way of political intrigue. It
would come to a more articulate and accentuated form of that balance of
power that has latterly gone bankrupt in Europe, with the most corrupt
and unreliable petty monarchies of eastern Europe vested with a casting
vote; and it would also involve a system of competitive armaments of the
same general character as what has also shown itself bankrupt. It would,
in other words, mean a virtual return to the _status quo ante_, but with
an overt recognition of its provisional character, and with the lines of
division more sharply drawn. That is to say, it would amount to
reinstating the situation which the projected league is intended to
avert. It is evidently contained in the premises that the projected
league must be all-inclusive, at least as regards its jurisdiction and
surveillance. The argument will return to this point presently.

The purpose of the projected league is peace and security, commonly
spoken of under patriotic preconceptions as "national" peace and
security. This will have to mean a competent enforcement of peace, on
such a footing of overmastering force at the disposal of the associated
pacific nations as to make security a matter of ordinary routine. It is
true, the more genial spokesmen of the project are given to the view
that what is to come of it all is a comity of neutral nations, amicably
adjusting their own relations among themselves in a spirit of peace and
good-will. But this view is over-sanguine, in that it overlooks the
point that into this prospective comity of nations Imperial Germany (and
Imperial Japan) fit like a drunken savage with a machine gun. It also
overlooks the patent fatality that these two are bound to come into a
coalition at the next turn, with whatever outside and subsidiary
resources they can draw on; provided only that a reasonable opening for
further enterprise presents itself. The league, in other terms, must be
in a position to enforce peace by overmastering force, and to anticipate
any move at cross purposes with the security of the pacific nations.

This end can be reached by either one of two ways. If the dynastic
States are left to their own devices, it will be incumbent on the
associated nations to pu