of those who sincerely desire peace forever cannot realize this. There
are, for example, many old-fashioned English liberals who denounce
militarism and "treaty entanglements" with equal ardor; they want
Britain to stand alone, unaggressive, but free; not realizing that such
an isolation is the surest encouragement to any war-enamored power.
Exactly the same type is to be found in the United States, and is
probably even more influential there. But only by so spinning a web of
treaties that all countries are linked by general obligations to mutual
protection can a real world-pacification be achieved.

The present alliance against the insufferable militarism of Germany may
very probably be the precursor of a much wider alliance against any
aggression whatever in the future. Only through some such arrangement is
there any reasonable hope of a control and cessation of that constant
international bickering and pressure, that rivalry in finance, that
competition for influence in weak neutral countries, which has initiated
all the struggles of the last century, and which is bound to accumulate
tensions for fresh wars so long as it goes on.

Already several States, and particularly the Government of the United
States of America, have signed treaties of arbitration, and The Hague
Tribunal spins a first web of obligations, exemplary if gossamer,
between the countries of the world. But these are but the faint initial
suggestions of much greater possibilities, and it is these greater
possibilities that have now to be realized if all the talk we have had
about a war to end war is to bear any fruit. What is now with each week
of the present struggle becoming more practicable is the setting up of a
new assembly that will take the place of the various embassies and
diplomatic organizations, of a mediaeval pattern and tradition, which
have hitherto conducted international affairs.