tax-paying, blood-paying common people did not exist. "L. G.," they say,
will of course "_insist_ on going," but there is much talk of the "Old
Man." People are getting quite nice again about "the Old Man's
feelings." It would be such a pretty thing to send him. But if "L. G."
goes we want him to go with something more than a backing of intrigues
and snatched authority. And I do not think the mass of people have any
enthusiasm for the Old Man. It is difficult again--by the dinner-party
standards--to know how Lord Curzon can be restrained. But we common
people do not care if he is restrained to the point of extinction.
Probably there will be nobody who talks or understands Russian among the
British representatives. But, of course, the British governing class has
washed its hands of the Russians. They were always very difficult, and
now they are "impossible, my dear, perfectly impossible."

No! That sort of thing will not do now. This Peace Congress is too big a
job for party politicians and society and county families. The bulk of
British opinion cannot go on being represented for ever by President
Wilson. We cannot always look to the Americans to express our ideas and
do our work for democracy. The foolery of the Berlin Treaty must not be
repeated. We cannot have another popular Prime Minister come triumphing
back to England with a gross of pink spectacles--through which we may
survey the prospect of the next great war. The League of Free Nations
means something very big and solid; it is not a rhetorical phrase to be
used to pacify a restless, distressed, and anxious public, and to be
sneered out of existence when that use is past. When the popular mind
now demands a League of Free Nations it demands a reality. The only way
to that reality is through the direct participation of the nation as a
whole in the settlement, and that is possible only through the direct
election for this particular issue of representative and responsible
men.