artnery, of the league of neutrals--all on the
presumption that the Imperial coalition will be brought to make peace on
terms of unconditional surrender.

Let it not seem presumptuous to venture on a recital of summary
specifications intended to indicate the nature of those concrete
measures which would logically be comprised in a scheme of pacification
carried out with such a view to impartial equality among the peoples who
are to make up the projected league. There is a significant turn of
expression that recurs habitually in the formulation of terms put forth
by the spokesmen of the Entente belligerents, where it is insisted that
hostilities are carried on not against the German people or the other
peoples associated with them, but only against the Imperial
establishments and their culpable aids and abettors in the enterprise.
So it is further insisted that there is no intention to bring pains and
penalties on these peoples, who so have been made use of by their
masters, but only on the culpable master class whose tools these peoples
have been. And later, just now (January 1917), and from a responsible
and disinterested spokesman for the pacific league, there comes the
declaration that a lasting peace at the hands of such a league can be
grounded only in a present "peace without victory."

The mutual congruity of these two declarations need not imply collusion,
but they are none the less complementary propositions and they are none
the less indicative of a common trend of convictions among the men who
are best able to speak for those pacific nations that are looked to as
the mainstay of the prospective league. They both converge to the point
that the objective to be achieved is not victory for the Entente
belligerents but defeat for the German-Imperial coalition; that the
peoples underlying the defeated governments are not to be dealt with as
vanquished enemies but as fellows in undeserved misfortune brought on by
their culpable masters; and that no advantage is designed to be taken of
these peoples, and no gratuitous hardship to be imposed on them. Their
masters are evidently to be put away, not as defeated antagonists but as
a public nuisance to be provided against as may seem expedient for the
peace and security of those nations whom they have been molesting.

Taking this position as outlined, it should not be extremely difficult
to forecast the general line of procedure which it would logically
demand,--barring