access to our royal family may be extraordinarily unfortunate for the British monarchy.  I will confess a certain sympathy for the Czar myself.  He is not an evil figure, he is not a strong figure, but he has that sort of weakness, that failure in decision, which trails revolution in its wake.  He has ended one dynasty already.  The British royal family owes it to itself, that he bring not the infection of his misfortunes to Windsor.

The security of the British monarchy lies in such a courageous severance of its destinies from the Teutonic dynastic system.  Will it make that severance?  There I share an almost universal ignorance.  The loyalty of the British is not to what kings are too prone to call “my person,” not to a chosen and admired family, but to a renascent mankind.  We have fought in this war for Belgium, for France, for general freedom, for civilization and the whole future of mankind, far more than for ourselves.  We have not fought for a king.  We are discovering in that spirit of human unity that lies below the idea of a League of Free Nations the real invisible king of our heart and race.  But we will very gladly go on with our task under a nominal king unless he hampers us in the task that grows ever more plainly before us. ...  That, I think, is a fair statement of British public opinion on this question.  But every day when I am in London I walk past Buckingham Palace to lunch at my club, and I look at that not very expressive facade and wonder—­and we all wonder—­what thoughts are going on behind it and what acts are being conceived there.  Out of it there might yet come some gesture of acceptance magnificent enough to set beside President Wilson’s magnificent declaration of war. ...

These are things in the scales of fate.  I will not pretend to be able to guess even which way the scales will swing.

VIII

THE PLAIN NECESSITY FOR A LEAGUE

Great as the sacrifices of prejudice and preconception which any effective realization of this idea of a League of Free Nations will demand, difficult as the necessary delegations of sovereignty must be, none the less are such sacrifices and difficulties unavoidable.  People in France and Italy and Great Britain and Germany alike have to subdue their minds to the realization that some such League is now a necessity for them if their peace and national life are to continue.  There is no prospect before them but either some such League or else great humiliation and disastrous warfare driving them down towards social dissolution; and for the United States it is only a question of a little longer time before the same alternatives have to be faced.