These are things in the scales of fate. I will not pretend to be able to
guess even which way the scales will swing.




VIII

THE PLAIN NECESSITY FOR A LEAGUE


Great as the sacrifices of prejudice and preconception which any
effective realization of this idea of a League of Free Nations will
demand, difficult as the necessary delegations of sovereignty must be,
none the less are such sacrifices and difficulties unavoidable. People
in France and Italy and Great Britain and Germany alike have to subdue
their minds to the realization that some such League is now a necessity
for them if their peace and national life are to continue. There is no
prospect before them but either some such League or else great
humiliation and disastrous warfare driving them down towards social
dissolution; and for the United States it is only a question of a little
longer time before the same alternatives have to be faced.

Whether this war ends in the complete defeat of Germany and German
imperialism, or in a revolutionary modernization of Germany, or in a
practical triumph for the Hohenzollerns, are considerations that affect
the nature and scope of the League, but do not affect its essential
necessity. In the first two cases the League of Free Nations will be a
world league including Germany as a principal partner, in the latter