One other possible starting-point has been suggested.  It is no great feat for a naive imagination to suppose the President of the Swiss Confederation or the President of the United States—­for each of these two systems is an exemplary and encouraging instance of the possibility of the pacific synthesis of independent States—­taking a propagandist course and proposing extensions of their own systems to the suffering belligerents.

But nothing of the sort occurs.  And when you come to look into the circumstances of these two Presidents you will discover that neither of them is any more free than anybody else to embark upon the task of creating a State-overriding, war-preventing organisation of the world.  He has been created by a system, and he is bound to a system; his concern is with the interests of the people of Switzerland or of the United States of America.  President Wilson, for example, is quite sufficiently occupied by the affairs of the White House, by the clash of political parties, by interferences with American overseas trade and the security of American citizens.  He has no more time to give to projects for the fundamental reconstruction of international relationships than has any recruit drilling in England, or any captain on an ocean liner, or any engineer in charge of a going engine.

We are all, indeed, busy with the things that come to hand every day.  We are all anxious for a permanent world peace, but we are all up to the neck in things that leave us no time to attend to this world peace that nearly every sane man desires.

Meanwhile, a small minority of people who trade upon contention—­militarists, ambitious kings and statesmen, war contractors, loan mongers, sensational journalists—­follow up their interests and start and sustain war.

There lies the paradoxical reality of this question.  Our first inquiry lands us into the elucidation of this deadlock.  Nearly everybody desires a world peace, and yet there is not apparent anywhere any man free and able and willing to establish it, while, on the other hand, there are a considerable number of men in positions of especial influence and power who will certainly resist the arrangements that are essential to its establishment.

But does this exhaust the question, and must we conclude that mankind is doomed to a perpetual, futile struggling of States and nations and peoples—­breaking ever and again into war?  The answer to that would probably, be “Yes” if it were not for the progress of war.  War is continually becoming more scientific, more destructive, more coldly logical, more intolerant of non-combatants, and more exhausting of any kind of property.  There is every reason to believe that it will continue to intensify these characteristics.  By doing so it may presently bring about a state of affairs that will supply just the lacking elements that are needed for the development of a world peace.

I would venture to suggest that the present war is doing so now:  that it is producing changes in men’s minds that may presently give us both the needed energy and the needed organisation from which a world direction may develop.