f national animosity is not
secure, in the absence of provocation. They are now again in a position
to learn to do without some of the useless legacy out of the
past,--useless, that is, for life as it runs today, however it may be
rated in the setting in which it was all placed in that past out of
which it has come. And the question is whether now, under the pressure
of exigencies that make for a disestablishment of much cumbersome
inherited apparatus for doing what need not be done, they will be ruled
by their sense of expediency and of fair dealing to the extent of
cancelling out of their own scheme of life so much of this legacy of
conventional preconceptions as has now come visibly to hinder their own
material well-being, and at the same time to defeat that peace and
security for which they have shown themselves willing to fight. It is,
of course, a simpler matter to fight than it is to put away a
preconceived, even if it is a bootless, superstition; as, e.g., the
prestige of hereditary wealth, hereditary gentility, national
vainglory, and perhaps especially national hatred. But if the school is
hard enough and the discipline protracted enough there is no reason in
the nature of things why the common run of the British people should not
unlearn these futilities that once were the substance of things under an
older and outworn order. They have already shown their capacity for
divesting themselves of outworn institutional bonds, in discarding the
main substance of dynastic rule; and when they now come to face the
exigencies of this new situation it should cause no great surprise if
they are able to see their way to do what further is necessary to meet
these exigencies.

* * * * *

At the hands of this British commonwealth the new situation requires the
putting away of the German Imperial establishment and the military
caste; the reduction of the German peoples to a footing of unreserved
democracy with sufficient guarantees against national trade
discriminations; surrender of all British tutelage over outlying
possessions, except what may go to guarantee their local autonomy;
cancelment of all extra-territorial pretensions of the several nations
entering into the league; neutralisation of the several national
establishments, to comprise virtual disarmament, as well as cancelment
of all restrictions on trade and of all national defense of
extra-territorial pecuniary claims and interests