As I think of it, turning it this way and that, there always comes to me just as I am falling to sleep this reflection: the English-speaking peoples now rule the world in all essential facts. They alone and Switzerland have permanent free government. In France there's freedom—but for how long? In Germany and Austria—hardly. In the Scandinavian States—yes, but they are small and exposed as are Belgium and Holland. In the big secure South American States—yes, it's coming. In Japan—? Only the British lands and the United States have secure liberty. They also have the most treasure, the best fighters, the most land, the most ships—the future in fact.
Now, because George Washington warned us against alliances, we've gone on as if an alliance were a kind of smallpox. Suppose there were—let us say for argument's sake—the tightest sort of an alliance, offensive and defensive, between all Britain, colonies and all, and the United States—what would happen? Anything we'd say would go, whether we should say, "Come in out of the wet," or, "Disarm." That might be the beginning of a real world-alliance and union to accomplish certain large results—disarmament, for instance, or arbitration—dozens of good things.
Of course, we'd have to draw and quarter the O'Gormans[56]. But that ought to be done anyhow in the general interest of good sense in the world. We could force any nation into this "trust" that we wanted in it.
Isn't it time we tackled such a job frankly, fighting out the Irish problem once for all, and having done with it?
I'm not proposing a programme. I'm only thinking out loud. I see little hope of doing anything so long as we choose to be ruled by an obsolete remark made by George Washington.
W.H.P.
January H, 1914.
. . . But this armament flurry is worth serious thought. Lloyd George gave out an interview, seeming to imply the necessity of reducing the navy programme. The French allies of the British went up in the air! They raised a great howl. Churchill went to see them, to soothe them. They would not be soothed. Now the Prime Minister is going to Paris—ostensibly to see his daughter off to the Riviera. Nobody believes that reason. They say he's going to smooth out the French. Meantime the Germans are gleeful.
And the British Navy League is receiving money and encouraging letters from British subjects, praying greater activity to keep the navy up. You touch the navy and you touch the quick—that's the lesson. It's an enormous excitement that this small incident has caused.
W.H.P.
To Edward M. House
London, February 24, 1914.
My Dear House: