why the world should wait for the Central Powers before it begins this
necessary work. Mr. McCurdy has been asking lately, "Why not the League
of Nations _now_?" That is a question a great number of people would
like to echo very heartily. The nearer the Allies can come to a League
of Free Nations before the Peace Congress the more prospect there is
that that body will approximate in nature to a League of Nations for the
whole world.

In one most unexpected quarter the same idea has been endorsed. The
King's Speech on the prorogation of Parliament this February was one of
the most remarkable royal utterances that have ever been made from the
British throne. There was less of the old-fashioned King and more of the
modern President about it than the most republican-minded of us could
have anticipated. For the first time in a King's Speech we heard of the
"democracies" of the world, and there was a clear claim that the Allies
at present fighting the Central Powers did themselves constitute a
League of Nations.

But we must admit that at present they do so only in a very rhetorical
sense. There is no real council of empowered representatives, and
nothing in the nature of a united front has been prepared. Unless we
provide beforehand for something more effective, Italy, France, the
United States, Japan, and this country will send separate groups of
representatives, with separate instructions, unequal status, and very
probably conflicting views upon many subjects, to the ultimate peace
discussions. It is quite conceivable--it is a very serious danger--that
at this discussion skilful diplomacy on the part of the Central Powers
may open a cleft among the Allies that has never appeared during the
actual war. Have the British settled, for example, with Italy and
France for the supply of metallurgical coal after the war? Those