return. On the other hand, the first maxim in all negotiation, the first principle of sound diplomacy, is always to give to the other side, and give without grudging, all he wants, provided it does not interfere with what it is important for your side to secure. Never be afraid of giving the opposing party too much, provided you get what your side really ought to have. How often has one heard in discussing a settlement the objection raised that the other party is getting too much! It is an old-time fallacy to think that practical good sense and the highest philanthropy are antagonistic; only be certain that if in any case they seem to be so, the latter is to prevail.

With a good map you may safely have Mr. Worldly Wiseman's company to the village of Morality, and visit the "judicious gentleman named Legality" and "his charming son Civility"—yet find a straight road thence to the Celestial City without deviating to the "great town" of Carnal Policy. An apology perhaps is due in the twentieth century for using the language of an earlier day; but everyone naturally thinks in the language in which he was brought up, and education is now no doubt sufficiently general to make allusion recognisable and translation easy. There are still some survivals from a past generation who prefer even the "minor prophets" as literature to the most "

up-to-date" modern utterances, though they have long ago relinquished the idea that there is the slightest personal merit in doing so. Even when the older language was half forgotten there were within our memory some who would use it if they could, and perhaps did so when they felt strongly, as a Scotsman in strange lands may, when deeply moved, revert to what convention insists on calling his "native doric."

The question may fairly be put to all who are dealing with proposals for reconstruction: "Is the aim you have in view definitely and clearly to promote the general benefit?" Most would no doubt be able quite honestly to answer, "Yes, that is my desire"; but we must go a step farther, "Are you willing to make that object paramount? If it were proved that in order to provide decent housing for a number of workers your dividends would be reduced, are you prepared still to urge that the required accommodation shall be provided? If the removal or the imposition of a particular tariff will benefit the community as a whole, are you prepared to vote for such a change, though owing to it the business in which you are personally interested may make less profit?" There are some men whose conduct shows that an answer could be given by them in the affirmative. When the great majority can so answer with truth, we need have no fear that the rebuilding of Britain, even if mistakes are made, will be on sound foundations.

To sum up: in considering each proposal we must first examine the spirit and the aim. Try the spirit, test the aims put before us by every means in our power; venture to measure them by the moral canons of the great thinkers and seers which have stood the test of time. Adopt the rules to which the acts of those who have benefited mankind have conformed or which have received the consent of the best—the "golden" rule, hard though it be to apply rightly and thoroughly, or Kant's principle that each act of the individual (or community) is to be tested by the standard

whether or no it can be made of universal application, whether it can command approval if taken as a guide for their actions by other men or other nations as well as our own. Goodwill and Charity, to be strong and true, must begin at home, but for their full fruition require a field which has no bounds.

Part II

PEACE

A.—INTERNATIONAL PEACE

CHAPTER II

LEAGUE OF NATIONS—THE NEED

Paramount in importance above everything else is the establishment and maintenance of peace between nations. No remedies for disease, no rules for healthy life will avail, if the arteries through which the life-blood is pouring away remain open still or are only temporarily closed and liable after a brief interval to burst out anew. The vitality of the nation would be gone beyond recovery if another generation of its best manhood were to be sacrificed and its materiall resources again squandered to meet the necessities of a great war.

Every day that the War lasts forces on us more clearly the fact that Science, not only natural science—physics and chemistry—but also the scientific organisation of the State as an instrument of war, has so developed the means of destruction as either to blot out humanity or to leave the greater part of mankind in abject and bitter slavery to the powers that can wield most effectively the instruments of death and of torture, if war between the leading nations breaks out again after an interval of seeming peace. How warfare has changed within living memory! Five-and-twenty years ago the highest authority on

naval construction spoke with contempt of the submarine as a factor in war at sea. No one then had solved the old world problem of aerial flight. Some of the most distinguished men of science regarded the attempts which were then being made as hopeless. It then seemed still to be a mere dream of poets. Wireless telegraphy was only a matter of speculation, a thing which a few only thought of as a possibility of the future. Man has indeed plucked the fruit of the tree of knowledge for his own destruction. What may be the result of another quarter of a century of like advancement of the knowledge of the means of spreading "death throughout the world and bitter woe"? It may not be, as Dr. Murray Butler says, that the strongest man will remain alone in a depopulated world. The strongest may succumb to the inventions for destruction and the survivors may be a few of those maimed or weakened by disease whom the storm has passed over as too obscure, of too little importance even for the messengers of Death to remember and to relieve from their misery. This is not rhetorical exaggeration. The weapons of offence regularly win in their race with the weapons of defence. Fortresses that took years to construct are shattered in a day. The ironclad is sunk by the torpedo. How very little margin lay between this country and starvation through action of submarines! Suppose the enemy had possessed five times as many submarines from the first, would our defensive measures have prevailed? How small an extension in the enemy's power in the air would have enabled him in a single night to leave London a mass of ruins, its whole population which had not fled dying in torment from poisonous gases! Another five-and-twenty years of advance in scientific knowledge equal to that of the last five-and-twenty years may easily make such a result possible.

But some man—one of those who never look beyond the next year and their own street, and expects always to carry on business as usual—will say that the nations will be exhausted and tired of war, and this War will be

the last. Dare any country trust to that unless a new spirit is infused into the nations and definite steps are taken to prevent war? Did those who had the best means of knowledge—the Government of the day—imagine