onary sabotage, may conceivably stand
to lose his preconception that the vested rights of ownership are the
cornerstone of his life, liberty and pursuit of happiness.

* * * * *

The considerations recited in this lengthy excursion on the war
situation and its probable effects on popular habits of thought in the
United Kingdom go to say that when peace comes to be negotiated, with
the United Kingdom as the chief constituent and weightiest spokesman of
the allied nations and of the league of pacific neutrals, the
representatives of British aims and opinions are likely to speak in a
different, chastened, and disillusioned fashion, as contrasted with what
the British attitude was at the beginning of hostilities. The
gentlemanly British animus of arrogant self-sufficiency will have been
somewhat sobered, perhaps somewhat subdued. Concession to the claims and
pretensions of the other pacific nations is likely to go farther than
might once have been expected, particularly in the way of concession to
any demand for greater international comity and less international
discrimination; essentially concession looking to a reduction of
national pretensions and an incipient neutralisation of national
interests. Coupled with this will presumably be a less conciliatory
attitude toward the members of the dynastic coalition against whom the
war has been fought, owing to a more mature realisation of the
impossibility of a lasting peace negotiated with a Power whose
substantial core is a warlike and irresponsible dynastic establishment.
The peace negotiations are likely to run on a lower level of diplomatic
deference to constituted authorities, and with more of a view to the
interests and sentiments of the underlying population, than was evident
in the futile negotiations had at the outbreak of hostilities. The
gentle art of diplomacy, that engages the talents of exalted personages
and well-bred statesmen, has been somewhat discredited; and if it turns
out that the vulgarisation of the directorate in the United Kingdom and
its associated allies and neutrals will have time to go on to something
like dominance and authenticity, then the deference which the spokesmen
of these nations are likely to show for the prescriptive rights of
dynasty, nobility, bureaucracy, or even of pecuniary aristocracy, in the
countries that make up the party of the second part, may be expected to
have shrunk appreciably, conceivably