Finally, the time is drawing near when the Egyptian and the nations of India will ask us, “Are things going on for ever here as they go on now, or are we to look for the time when we, too, like the Africander, the Canadian and the Australian, will be your confessed and equal partners?” Would it not be wise to answer that question in the affirmative before the voice in which it is asked grows thick with anger?  In Egypt, for example, we are either robbers very like—­except for a certain difference in touch—­the Germans in Belgium, or we are honourable trustees.  It is our claim and pride to be honourable trustees.  Nothing so becomes a trustee as a cheerful openness of disposition.  Great Britain has to table her world policy.  It is a thing overdue.  No doubt we have already a literature of liberal imperialism and a considerable accumulation of declarations by this statesman or that.  But what is needed is a formulation much more representative, official and permanent than that, something that can be put beside President Wilson’s clear rendering of the American idea.  We want all our peoples to understand, and we want all mankind to understand that our Empire is not a net about the world in which the progress of mankind is entangled, but a self-conscious political system working side by side with the other democracies of the earth, preparing the way for, and prepared at last to sacrifice and merge itself in, the world confederation of free and equal peoples.

Sec. 2

This letter was presently followed up by an article in the Daily News, entitled “A Reasonable Man’s Peace.”  This article provoked a considerable controversy in the imperialist press, and it was reprinted as a pamphlet by a Free Trade organization, which distributed over 200,000 copies.  It is particularly interesting to note, in view of what follows it, that it was attacked with great virulence in the Evening News, the little fierce mud-throwing brother of the Daily Mail.

The international situation at the present time is beyond question the most wonderful that the world has ever seen.  There is not a country in the world in which the great majority of sensible people are not passionately desirous of peace, of an enduring peace, and—­the war goes on.  The conditions of peace can now be stated, in general terms that are as acceptable to a reasonable man in Berlin as they are to a reasonable man in Paris or London or Petrograd or Constantinople.  There are to be no conquests, no domination of recalcitrant populations, no bitter insistence upon vindictive penalties, and there must be something in the nature of a world-wide League of Nations to keep the peace securely in future, to “make the world safe for democracy,” and maintain international justice.  To that the general mind of the world has come to-day.

Why, then, does the waste and killing go on?  Why is not the Peace Conference sitting now?