A COMMON WILL

Observe that there are three points here.  In the first place—­if I do not misapprehend Mr. Asquith’s drift—­in working for the abolition of militarism, we are working for a great diminution in those armaments which have become a nightmare to the modern world.  The second point is that we have to help in every fashion small nationalities, or, in other words, that we have to see that countries like Belgium, Holland, Switzerland, the Scandinavian countries, Greece and the Balkan States, and, perhaps, more specially, the Slav nationalities shall have a free chance in Europe, shall “have their place in the sun,” and not be browbeaten and raided and overwhelmed by their powerful neighbours.  And the third point, perhaps more important than all, is the creation of what Mr. Asquith calls a “European partnership based on the recognition of equal right and established and enforced by a common will.”  We have to recognise that there is such a thing as public right; that there is such a thing as international morality, and that the United States of Europe have to keep as their ideal the affirmation of this public right, and to enforce it by a common will.  That creation of a common will is at once the most difficult and the most imperative thing of all.  Every one must be aware how difficult it is.  We know, for instance, how the common law is enforced in any specified state, because it has a “sanction,” or, in other words, because those who break it can be punished.  But the weakness for a long time past of international law, from the time of Grotius onwards, is that it apparently has no real sanction.  How are we to punish an offending state?  It can only be done by the gradual development of a public conscience in Europe, and by means of definite agreements so that the rest of the civilised world shall compel a recalcitrant member to abide by the common decrees.  If only this common will of Europe ever came into existence, we should have solved most, if not all, our troubles.  But the question is:  How?

A HUNDRED YEARS AGO

It may be depressing, but it certainly is an instructive lesson to go back just a hundred years ago, when the condition of Europe was in many respects similar to that which prevails now.  The problems that unrolled themselves before the nations afford useful points of comparison.  The great enemy was then Napoleon and France.  Napoleon’s views of empire were precisely of that universal predatory type which we have learnt to associate with the Kaiser and the German Empire.  The autocratic rule of the single personal will was weighing heavily on nearly every quarter of the globe.  Then came a time when the principle of nationality, which Napoleon had everywhere defied, gradually grew in strength until it was able to shake off the yoke of the conqueror.  In Germany, and Spain, and Italy the principle of nationality steadily