co-operation of every state in the western hemisphere, has entered the war.  The British Empire, in the midst of the stress of the great war, has set up in Dublin a Convention of Irishmen of all opinions with the fullest powers of deciding upon the future of their country.  If Ireland were not divided against herself she could be free and equal with England to-morrow.  It is the open intention of Great Britain to develop representative government, where it has not hitherto existed, in India and Egypt, to go on steadfastly increasing the share of the natives of these countries in the government of their own lands, until they too become free and equal members of the world league.  Neither France nor Italy nor Britain nor America has ever tampered with the shipping of other countries except in time of war, and the trade of the British Empire has been impartially open to all the world.  The extra-national “possessions,” the so-called “subject nations” in the Empires of Britain, France, Italy, and Japan, are, in fact, possessions held in trust against the day when the League of Free Nations will inherit for mankind.

Is it to be union by conquest or is it to be union by league?  For any sort of man except the German the question is, Will you be a free citizen or will you be an underling to the German imperialism?  For the German now the question is a far graver and more tragic one.  For him it is this:  “You belong to a people not now increasing very rapidly, a numerous people, but not so numerous as some of the great peoples of the world, a people very highly trained, very well drilled and well armed, perhaps as well trained and drilled and equipped as ever it will be.  The collapse of Russian imperialism has made you safe if now you can get peace, and you can get a peace now that will neither destroy you nor humiliate you nor open up the prospect of fresh wars.  The Allies offer you such a peace.  To accept it, we must warn you plainly, means refusing to go on with the manifest intentions of your present rulers, which are to launch you and your children and your children’s children upon a career of struggle for war predominance, which may no doubt inflict untold deprivations and miseries upon the rest of mankind, but whose end in the long run, for Germany and things German, can be only Judgment and Death.”

In such terms as these the Oceanic Allies could now state their war-will and carry the world straightway into a new phase of human history.  They could but they do not.  For alas! not one of them is free from the entanglements of past things; when we look for the wisdom of statesmen we find the cunning of politicians; when open speech and plain reason might save the world, courts, bureaucrats, financiers and profiteers conspire.

VII

THE FUTURE OF MONARCHY