III

THE NECESSARY POWERS OF THE LEAGUE


If this phrase, "the League of Free Nations," is to signify anything
more than a rhetorical flourish, then certain consequences follow that
have to be faced now. No man can join a partnership and remain an
absolutely free man. You cannot bind yourself to do this and not to do
that and to consult and act with your associates in certain
eventualities without a loss of your sovereign freedom. People in this
country and in France do not seem to be sitting up manfully to these
necessary propositions.

If this League of Free Nations is really to be an effectual thing for
the preservation of the peace of the world it must possess power and
exercise power, powers must be delegated to it. Otherwise it will only
help, with all other half-hearted good resolutions, to pave the road of
mankind to hell. Nothing in all the world so strengthens evil as the
half-hearted attempts of good to make good.

It scarcely needs repeating here--it has been so generally said--that
no League of Free Nations can hope to keep the peace unless every member
of it is indeed a free member, represented by duly elected persons.
Nobody, of course, asks to "dictate the internal government" of any
country to that country. If Germans, for instance, like to wallow in