explicit now for many months, is quite unprecedented. Apparently all the
broad preliminaries are to be stated and accepted in the sight of all
mankind before even an armistice occurs on the main, the western front.
The German diplomatists hate this process. So do a lot of ours. So do
some of the diplomatic Frenchmen. The German junkers are dodging and
lying, they are fighting desperately to keep back everything they
possibly can for the bargaining and bullying and table-banging of the
council chamber, but that way there is no peace. And when at last
Germany says snip sufficiently to the Allies' snap, and the Peace
Congress begins, it will almost certainly be as unprecedented as its
prelude. Before it meets, the broad lines of the settlement will have
been drawn plainly with the approval of the mass of mankind.




II

THE LEAGUE MUST BE REPRESENTATIVE


A Peace Congress, growing permanent, then, may prove to be the most
practical and convenient embodiment of this idea of a League of Nations
that has taken possession of the imagination of the world. A most
necessary preliminary to a Peace Congress, with such possibilities
inherent in it, must obviously be the meeting and organization of a
preliminary League of the Allied Nations. That point I would now
enlarge.

Half a world peace is better than none. There seems no reason whatever