own position.

Well, at the risk of rousing much patriotic wrath, I must admit that I
think we _have_ to reconsider our position. Our argument is that in
India, Egypt, Africa and elsewhere, we stand for order and civilization,
we are the trustees of freedom, the agents of knowledge and efficiency.
On the whole the record of British rule is a pretty respectable one; I
am not ashamed of our record. Nevertheless _the case is altering_.

It is quite justifiable for us British, no doubt, if we do really play
the part of honest trustees, to remain in Egypt and in India under
existing conditions; it is even possible for us to glance at the
helplessness of Arabia, Palestine, and Mesopotamia, as yet incapable of
self-government, helpless as new-born infants. But our case, our only
justifiable case, is that we are trustees because there is no better
trustee possible. And the creation of a council of a League of Free
Nations would be like the creation of a Public Trustee for the world.
The creation of a League of Free Nations must necessarily be the
creation of an authority that may legitimately call existing empires to
give an account of their stewardship. For an unchecked fragmentary
control of tropical and chaotic regions, it substitutes the possibility
of a general authority. And this must necessarily alter the problems not
only of the politically immature nations and the control of the tropics,
but also of the regulation of the sea ways, the regulation of the coming
air routes, and the distribution of staple products in the world. I will
not go in detail over the items of this list, because the reader can
fill in the essentials of the argument from what has gone before. I
want simply to suggest how widely this project of a League of Free
Nations swings when once you have let it swing freely in your mind! And
if you do not let it swing freely in your mind, it remains nothing--a
sentimental gesture.

The plain truth is that the League of Free Nations, if it is to be a
reality, if it is to effect a real pacification of the world, must do no
less than supersede Empire; it must end not only this new German
imperialism, which is struggling so savagely and powerfully to possess
the earth, but it must also wind up British imperialism and French
imperialism, which do now so largely and inaggressively possess it. And,
moreover, this idea queries the adjective of Belgian, Portuguese,
French, and British Central Africa alike, just as e