t in the field a standing force sufficient to
prevent a recourse to arms; which means competitive armament and
universal military rule. Or the dynastic States may be taken into
partnership and placed under such surveillance and constraint as to
practically disarm them; which would admit virtual disarmament of the
federated nations. The former arrangement has nothing in its favour,
except the possibility that no better or less irksome arrangement can be
had under existing circumstances; that is to say that the pacific
nations may not be able to bring these dynastic states to terms of
disarmament under surveillance. They assuredly can not except by force;
and this is the precise point on which the continued hostilities in
Europe turn today. In diplomatic parable the German Imperial spokesmen
say that they can accept (or as they prefer to phrase it, grant) no
terms that do not fully safeguard the Future of the Fatherland; and in
similarly diplomatic parable the spokesmen of the Entente insist that
Prussian militarism must be permanently put out of commission; but it
all means the same thing, viz. that the Imperial establishment is to be
(or is not to be) disabled beyond the possibility of its entering on a
similar warlike enterprise again, when it has had time for recuperation.
The dynastic statesmen, and the lay subjects of the Imperial
establishment, are strenuously set on securing a fair opportunity for
recuperation and a wiser endeavour to achieve that dominion which the
present adventure promises to defeat; while the Entente want no
recurrence, and are persuaded that a recurrence can be avoided only on
the footing of a present collapse of the Imperial power and a
scrupulously enforced prostration of it henceforth.

Without the definitive collapse of the Imperial power no pacific league
of nations can come to anything much more than armistice. On the basis
of such a collapse the league may as well administer its affairs
economically by way of an all-around reduction of armaments, as by the
costlier and more irksome way of "preparedness." But a sensible
reduction of armaments on the part of the neutral nations implies
disarmament of the dynastic States. Which would involve a neutral
surveillance of the affairs of these dynastic States in such detail and
with such exercise of authority as would reduce their governments to the
effective status of local administrative officials. Out of which, in
turn, would arise complicat