by astute delegates pursuing the special advantage, each of his own nation. And yet the peremptory need of reaching some practicable arrangement whereby the peace may be kept, goes to say that even the most astute negotiations will in some degree be controlled by that need, and may reasonably be expected to make some approach to the simple and obvious requirements of the situation.
Therefore the argument returns to the United Kingdom and the probable limit of tolerance of that people, in respect of what they are likely to insist on as a necessary measure of democratisation in the nations of the second part, and what measure of national abnegation they are likely to accommodate themselves to. The United Kingdom is indispensable to the formation of a pacific league of neutrals. And the British terms of adhesion, or rather of initiation of such a league, therefore, will have to constitute the core of the structure, on which details may be adjusted and to which concessive adjustments will have to be made by all the rest. This is not saying that the projected league must or will be dominated by the United Kingdom or administered in the British interest. Indeed, it can not well be made to serve British particular interests in any appreciable degree, except at the cost of defeat to its main purpose; since the purposes of an enduring peace can be served only by an effectual neutralisation of national claims and interests. But it would mean that the neutralisation of national interests and discriminations to be effected would have to be drawn on lines acceptable to British taste in these matters, and would have to go approximately so far as would be dictated by the British notions of what is expedient, and not much farther. The pacific league of neutrals would have much of a British
air, but "British" in this connection is to be taken as connoting the English-speaking countries rather than as applying to the United Kingdom alone; since the entrance of the British into the league would involve the entrance of the British colonies, and, indeed, of the American republic as well.
The temper and outlook of this British community, therefore, becomes a matter of paramount importance in any attempted analysis of the situation resulting after the war, or of any prospective course of conduct to be entered on by the pacific nations. And the question touches not so much the temper and preconceptions of the British community as known in recent history, but rather as it is likely to be modified by the war experience. So that the practicability of a neutral league comes to turn, in great measure, on the effect which this war experience is having on the habits of thought of the British people, or on that section of the British population which will make up the effectual majority when the war closes. The grave interest that attaches to this question must serve as justification for pursuing it farther, even though there can be no promise of a definite or confident answer to be found beforehand.
Certain general assertions may be made with some confidence. The experiences of the war, particularly among the immediate participants and among their immediate domestic connections—a large and increasing proportion of the people at large—are plainly impressing on them the uselessness and hardship of such a war. There can be no question but they are reaching a conviction that a war of this modern kind and scale is a thing to be avoided if possible. They are, no doubt, willing to go to very considerable lengths to make a repetition of it impossible, and
they may reasonably be expected to go farther along that line before peace returns. But the lengths to which they are ready to go may be in the way of concessions, or in the way of contest and compulsion. There need be no doubt but a profound and vindictive resentment runs through the British community, and there is no reason to apprehend that this will be dissipated in the course of further hostilities; although it should fairly be expected to lose something of its earlier exuberant malevolence and indiscrimination, more particularly if hostilities continue for some time. It is not too much to expect, that this popular temper of resentment will demand something very tangible in the way of summary vengeance on those who have brought the hardships of war upon the nation.
The manner of retribution which would meet the popular demand for "justice" to be done on the enemy is likely to be affected by the fortunes of war, as also the incidence of it. Should the governmental establishment and the discretion still vest in the gentlemanly classes at the close of hostilities, the retribution is likely to take the accustomed gentlemanly shape of pecuniary burdens imposed on the people of the defeated country, together with diplomatically specified surrender of territorial and colonial possessions, and the like; such as to leave the de facto enemy courteously on one side, and to yield something in the way of pecuniary benefit to the gentlemen-investors in charge, and something more in the way of new emoluments of office to the office-holding class included in the same order of gentlemen. The retribution in the case would manifestly fall on the underlying population in the defeated country, without seriously touching the responsible parties, and would leave the defeated nation with a new grievance to nourish its patriotic animosity and with
a new incentive to a policy of watchful waiting for a chance of retaliation.
But it is to be noted that under the stress of the war there is going forward in the British community a progressive displacement of gentlemanly standards and official procedure by standards and procedure of a visibly underbred character, a weakening of the hold of the gentlemanly classes on the control of affairs and a weakening of the hold which the sacred rights of property, investment and privilege have long had over the imagination of the British people. Should hostilities continue, and should the exigencies of the war situation continue to keep the futility of these sacred rights, as well as the fatuity of their possessors, in the public eye, after the same fashion as hitherto, it would not be altogether unreasonable to expect that the discretion would pass into the hands of the underbred, or into the hands of men immediately and urgently accountable to the underbred. In such a case, and with a constantly growing popular realisation that the directorate and responsible enemy in the war is the Imperial dynasty and its pedigreed aids and abettors, it is conceivable that the popular resentment would converge so effectually on these responsible instigators and directors of misfortune as to bring the incidence of the required retribution effectually to bear on them. The outcome might, not inconceivably, be the virtual erasure of the Imperial dynasty, together with the pedigreed-class rule on which it rests and the apparatus of irresponsible coercion through which it works, in the Fatherland and in its subsidiaries and dependencies.