outlay for their own defense.

Of course, there is, in all this, no temerarious intention to offer
advice as to what should be done by those who have it to do, or even to
sketch the necessary course which events are bound to take. As has been
remarked in another passage, that would have to be a work of prophesy or
of effrontery, both of which, it is hoped, lie equally beyond the
horizon of this inquiry; which is occupied with the question of what
conditions will logically have to be met in order to an enduring peace,
not what will be the nature and outcome of negotiations entered into by
astute delegates pursuing the special advantage, each of his own nation.
And yet the peremptory need of reaching some practicable arrangement
whereby the peace may be kept, goes to say that even the most astute
negotiations will in some degree be controlled by that need, and may
reasonably be expected to make some approach to the simple and obvious
requirements of the situation.

* * * * *

Therefore the argument returns to the United Kingdom and the probable
limit of tolerance of that people, in respect of what they are likely to
insist on as a necessary measure of democratisation in the nations of
the second part, and what measure of national abnegation they are likely
to accommodate themselves to. The United Kingdom is indispensable to the
formation of a pacific league of neutrals. And the British terms of
adhesion, or rather of initiation of such a league, therefore, will have
to constitute the core of the structure, on which details may be
adjusted and to which concessive adjustments will have to be made by all
the rest. This is not saying that the projected league must or will be
dominated by the United Kingdom or administered in the British interest.
Indeed, it can not well be made to serve British particular interests in
any appreciable degree, except at the cost of defeat to its main
purpose; since the purposes of an enduring peace can be served only by
an effectual neutralisation of national claims and interests. But it
would mean that the neutralisation of national interests and
discriminations to be effected would have to be drawn on lines
acceptable to British taste in these matters, and would have to go
approximately so far as would be dictated by the British notions of what
is expedient, and not much farther. The pacific league of neutrals would
have much of a British air, but "British" in