grasp--and failed
to grip it. The British cavalry generals wasted the great invention of
the tanks as a careless child breaks a toy. At least equally remarkable
is the dragging inadaptability of European statecraft. Everywhere the
failure of ministers and statesmen to rise to the urgent definite
necessities of the present time is glaringly conspicuous. They seem to
be incapable even of thinking how the war may be brought to an end. They
seem incapable of that plain speaking to the world audience which alone
can bring about a peace. They keep on with the tricks and feints of a
departed age. Both on the side of the Allies and on the side of the
Germans the declarations of public policy remain childishly vague and
disingenuous, childishly "diplomatic." They chaffer like happy imbeciles
while civilization bleeds to death. It was perhaps to be expected. Few,
if any, men of over five-and-forty completely readjust themselves to
changed conditions, however novel and challenging the changes may be,
and nearly all the leading figures in these affairs are elderly men
trained in a tradition of diplomatic ineffectiveness, and now overworked
and overstrained to a pitch of complete inelasticity. They go on as if
it were still 1913. Could anything be more palpably shifty and
unsatisfactory, more senile, more feebly artful, than the recent
utterances of the German Chancellor? And, on our own side--

Let us examine the three leading points about this peace business in
which this jaded statecraft is most apparent.

Let the reader ask himself the following questions:--

Does he know what the Allies mean to do with the problem of Central
Africa? It is the clear common sense of the African situation that while
these precious regions of raw material remain divided up between a
number of competitive European imperialisms, each resolutely set upon
the exploitation of its "possessions" to its own advantage and the
disadvantage of the others, there can be no permanent peace in the
world. There can be permanent peace in the world only when tropical and
sub-tropical Africa constitute a field free to the commercial enterprise
of every one irrespective of nationality, when this is no longer an area
of competition between nations. This is possible only under some supreme
international control. It requires no special knowledge nor wisdom to
see that. A schoolboy can see it. Any one but a statesman absolutely
flaccid with overstrain can see that. Howe