armament industries are not always easy to define. Are aeroplanes, for
example, armament? Its powers, I suggest, must extend even to a
restraint upon the belligerent propaganda which is the natural
advertisement campaign of every armament industry. It must have the
right, for example, to raise the question of the proprietorship of
newspapers by armament interests. Disarmament is, in fact, a necessary
factor of any League of Free Nations, and you cannot have disarmament
unless you are prepared to see the powers of the council of the League
extend thus far. The very existence of the League presupposes that it
and it alone is to have and to exercise military force. Any other
belligerency or preparation or incitement to belligerency becomes
rebellion, and any other arming a threat of rebellion, in a world League
of Free Nations.

But here, again, has the general mind yet thought out all that is
involved in this proposition? In all the great belligerent countries the
armament industries are now huge interests with enormous powers. Krupp's
business alone is as powerful a thing in Germany as the Crown. In every
country a heavily subsidized "patriotic" press will fight desperately
against giving powers so extensive and thorough as those here suggested
to an international body. So long, of course, as the League of Free
Nations remains a project in the air, without body or parts, such a
press will sneer at it gently as "Utopian," and even patronize it
kindly. But so soon as the League takes on the shape its general
proposition makes logically necessary, the armament interest will take
fright. Then it is we shall hear the drum patriotic loud in defence of
the human blood trade. Are we to hand over these most intimate affairs
of ours to "a lot of foreigners"? Among these "foreigners" who will be
appealed to to terrify the patriotic souls of the British will be the
"Americans." Are we men of English blood and tradition to see our