(1) The politically undeveloped tropics;

(2) Shipping and international trade; and

(3) Small nationalities and all regions in a state of political
impotence or confusion?

It is our case against the Germans that in all these three cases they
have subordinated every consideration of justice and the general human
welfare to a monstrous national egotism. That argument has a double
edge. At present there is a vigorous campaign in America, Russia, the
neutral countries generally, to represent British patriotism as equally
egotistic, and our purpose in this war as a mere parallel to the German
purpose. In the same manner, though perhaps with less persistency,
France and Italy are also caricatured. We are supposed to be grabbing at
Mesopotamia and Palestine, France at Syria; Italy is represented as
pursuing a Machiavellian policy towards the unfortunate Greek
republicans, with her eyes on the Greek islands and Greece in Asia. Is
it not time that these base imputations were repudiated clearly and
conclusively by our Alliance? And is it not time that we began to
discuss in much more frank and definite terms than has hitherto been
done, the nature of the international arrangement that will be needed to
secure the safety of such liberated populations as those of Palestine,
of the Arab regions of the old Turkish empire, of Armenia, of reunited
Poland, and the like?

I do not mean here mere diplomatic discussions and "understandings," I
mean such full and plain statements as will be spread through the whole
world and grasped and assimilated by ordinary people everywhere,