democratic institutions the Foreign Secretary may at any moment step
down from the Foreign Office to the House of Commons and say, "I
arranged yesterday with the ambassador from Cocagne that England is to
join his country in fighting Brobdingnag; so vote me a couple of hundred
millions, and off with you to the trenches," we shall be just where we
were before as far as any likelihood of putting an end to war is
concerned. The congress will certainly ask us to pledge ourselves that
if we shake the mailed fist at all we shall shake it publicly, and that
though we may keep our sword ready (let me interject in passing that
disarmament is all nonsense: nobody is going to disarm after this
experience) it shall be drawn by the representatives of the nation, and
not by Junker diplomatists who despise and distrust the nation, and have
planned war behind its back for years. Indeed they will probably demur
to its being drawn even by the representative of the nation until the
occasion has been submitted to the judgment of the representatives of
the world, or such beginnings of a world representative body as may be
possible. That is the true _Weltpolitik_.


*The Hegemony of Peace.*

For the main business of the settlement, if it is to have any serious
business at all, must be the establishment of a Hegemony of Peace, as
desired by all who are really capable of high civilization, and
formulated by me in the daily Press in a vain attempt to avert this
mischief whilst it was brewing. Nobody took the smallest public notice
of me; so I made a lady in a play say "Not bloody likely," and instantly
became famous beyond the Kaiser, beyond the Tsar, beyond Sir Edward
Grey, beyond Shakespeare and Homer and President Wilson, the papers
occupying themselves with me for a whole week just as they are now