as distinct from South America, by a general agreement not to resort to force, so it is the English method in the international field which gives better results than that based on force.  The relationship of Great Britain to Canada or Australia is preferable to the relationship of Russia to Finland or Poland, or Germany to Alsace-Lorraine.  The five nations of the British Empire have, by agreement, abandoned the use of force as between themselves.  Australia may do us an injury—­exclude our subjects, English or Indian, and expose them to insult—­but we know very well that force will not be used against her.  To withhold such force is the basis of the relationship of these five nations; and, given a corresponding development of ideas, might equally well be the basis of the relationship of fifteen—­about all the nations of the world who could possibly fight.  The difficulties Mr. Chesterton imagines—­an international tribunal deciding in favour of Austria concerning the recession of Venice and Lombardy, and summoning the forces of United Europe to coerce Italy into submission—­are, of course, based on the assumption that a United Europe, having arrived at such understanding as to be able to sink its differences, would be the same kind of Europe that it is now, or was a generation ago.  If European statecraft advances sufficiently to surrender the use of force against neighbouring states, it will have advanced sufficiently to surrender the use of force against unwilling provinces, as in some measure British statesmanship has already done.  To raise the difficulty that Mr. Chesterton does is much the same as assuming that a court of law in San Domingo or Turkey will give the same results as a court of law in Great Britain, because the form of the mechanism is the same.  And does Mr. Chesterton suggest that the war system settles these matters to perfection?  That it has worked satisfactorily in Ireland and Finland, or, for the matter of that, in Albania or Macedonia?

For if Mr. Chesterton urges that killing and being killed is the way to determine the best means of governing a country, it is his business to defend the Turk, who has adopted that principle during four hundred years, not the Christians, who want to bring that method to an end and adopt another.  And I would ask no better example of the utter failure of the principles that I combat and Mr. Chesterton defends than their failure in the Balkan Peninsula.

This war is due to the vile character of Turkish rule, and the Turk’s rule is vile because it is based on the sword.  Like Mr. Chesterton (and our pirate), the Turk believes in the right of conquest, “the ultimate test of how they fight.”  “The history of the Turks,” says Sir Charles Elliott, “is almost exclusively a catalogue of battles.”  He has lived (for the most gloriously uneconomic person has to live, to follow a trade of some sort, even if it be that of theft) on tribute exacted from the Christian populations, and extorted,