doubtfully capable: Italy, Japan, and Austria. Russia I will mark--it is
all that one can do with Russia just now--with a note of interrogation.
Some day China may be war capable--I hope never, but it is a
possibility. Personally I don't think that any other power on earth
would have a ghost of a chance to resist the will--if it could be an
honestly united will--of the first-named four. All the rest fight by the
sanction of and by association with these leaders. They can only fight
because of the split will of the war-complete powers. Some are forced to
fight by that very division.

No one can vie with me in my appreciation of the civilization of
Switzerland, Sweden, or Holland, but the plain fact of the case is that
such powers are absolutely incapable of uttering an effective protest
against war. Far less so are your Haytis and Liberias. The preservation
of the world-peace rests with the great powers and with the great powers
alone. If they have the will for peace, it is peace. If they have not,
it is conflict. The four powers I have named can now, if they see fit,
dictate the peace of the world for ever.

Let us keep our grip on that. Peace is the business of the great powers
primarily. Steel output, university graduates, and so forth may be
convenient secondary criteria, may be useful ways of measuring war
efficiency, but the meat and substance of the Council of the League of
Nations must embody the wills of those leading peoples. They can give an
enduring peace to the little nations and the whole of mankind. It can
arrive in no other way. So I take it that the Council of an ideal League
of Nations must consist chiefly of the representatives of the great
belligerent powers, and that the representatives of the minor allies and
of the neutrals--essential though their presence will be--must not be
allowed to swamp the voices of these larger masses of mankind.