tangle of relationships, misstatements,
and misconceptions arising from the ill-co-ordinated activities of this
double system of agents, it is proposed to send one or several
ambassadors to some central point, such as The Hague, to meet there all
the ambassadors of all the significant States in the world and to deal
with international questions with a novel frankness in a collective
meeting.

This has now become a possible way of doing the world's business because
of the development of the means of communication and information. The
embassy in a foreign country, as a watching, remonstrating, proposing
extension of its country of origin, a sort of eye and finger at the
heart of the host country, is now clumsy, unnecessary, inefficient, and
dangerous. For most routine work, for reports of all sorts, for legal
action, and so forth, on behalf of traveling nationals, the consular
service is adequate, or can easily be made adequate. What remains of the
ambassadorial apparatus might very well merge with the consular system
and the embassy become an international court civility, a ceremonial
vestige without any diplomatic value at all.

IV.

Given a permanent world congress developed out of the congress of
settlement between the belligerents, a world alliance, with as a last
resort a call upon the forces of the associated powers, for dealing with
recalcitrants, then a great number of possibilities open out to humanity
that must otherwise remain inaccessible. But before we go on to consider
these it may be wise to point out how much more likely a world congress
is to effect a satisfactory settlement at the end of this war than a
congress confined to the belligerents.

The war has progressed sufficiently to convince every one that there is
now no possibility of an overwhelming victory for Germany. It must end
in a more or less complete defeat of the German and Turkish alliance,
and in a considerable readjustment of Austrian and Turkish boundaries.
Assisted by the generosity of the doomed Austrians and Turks, the
Germans are fighting now to secure a voice as large as possible in the
final settlement, and it is conceivable that in the end that settlement
may be made quite an attractive one for Germany proper by the crowning
sacrifice of suicide on the part of her two subordinated allies.

There can be little doubt that Russia will gain the enormous advantage
of a free opening into the Mediterranean and that the battle of th