It is still possible that the war may end in what is called an inconclusive peace; and as it is certain that of all her unrighteous gains that to which Germany will most desperately cling will be her domination over the Austrian and Turkish Empires, with the prospect which it affords of a later and more fortunate attempt at world-power, an inconclusive peace would mean that the whole world would live in constant dread of a renewal of these agonies and horrors in a still more awful form.  What the effect of this would be upon the extra-European dominions of powers which would be drained of their manhood and loaded with the burden of the past war and the burden of preparation for the coming war, it is beyond our power to imagine.  But it seems likely that the outer world would very swiftly begin to revise its judgment as to the value of that civilisation which it has, upon the whole, been ready to welcome; and chaos would soon come again.

Finally, it is possible that the Evil Power may be utterly routed, and the allied empires, tried by fire, may be given the opportunity and the obligation of making, not merely a new Europe, but a new world.  If that chance should come, how will they use it?  One thing at least is clear.  The task which will face the diplomats who take part in the coming peace-congress will be different in kind as well as in degree from that of any of their predecessors at any moment in human history.  They will be concerned not merely with the adjustment of the differences of a few leading states, and not merely with the settlement of Europe:  they will have to deal with the whole world, and to decide upon what principles and to what ends the leadership of the peoples of European stock over the non-European world is to be exercised.  Whether they realise it or not, whether they intend it or not, they will create either a world-order or a world-disorder.  And it will inevitably be a world-disorder which will result unless we do some hard thinking on this gigantic problem which faces us, and unless we are prepared to learn, from the history of the relations of Europe with the outer world, what are the principles by which we ought to be guided.  We are too prone, when we think of the problems of the future peace, to fix our attention almost wholly upon Europe, and, if we think of the non-European world at all, to assume either that the problem is merely one of power, or that the principles which will guide us in the settlement of Europe can be equally applied outside of Europe.  Both of these assumptions are dangerous, because both disregard the teachings of the past which we have been surveying.