e speech usages of the two peoples draw closer together. For one
thing, we on this side now borrow, and borrow very freely, the more
picturesque colloquialisms of America. On informal occasions I sometimes
brighten my own speech with phrases which I think I owe to one of the
best of living American authors, Mr. George Ade, of Chicago, the author
of _Fables in Slang_. The press, the telegraph, the telephone, and the
growing habit of travel bind us closer together every year; and the
English that we speak, however rich and various it may be, is going to
remain one and the same English, our common inheritance.

One question, the most important and difficult of all, remains to be
asked. Will this War, in its course and in its effects, tend to prevent
or discourage later wars? If the gains that it brings prove to be merely
partial and national gains, if it exalts one nation by unjustly
depressing another, and conquers cruelty by equal cruelty, then nothing
can be more certain than that the peace of the world is farther off than
ever. When she was near her death, Edith Cavell, patriot and martyr,
said that patriotism is not enough. Every one who thinks on
international affairs knows this; almost every one forgets it in time of
war. What can be done to prevent nations from appealing to the wild
justice of revenge?

A League of Nations may do good, but I am surprised that any one who has
imagination and a knowledge of the facts should entertain high hopes of
it as a full solution. There is a League of Nations to-day which has
given a verdict against the Central Powers, and that verdict is being
enforced by the most terrible War in all human history. If the verdict
had been given before the War began, it may be said, then Germany might
have accepted it, and refrained. So she might, but what then? She would
have felt herself wronged; she would have deferred the War, and, in ways
that she knows so well, would have set about making a party for herself
among the nations of the League. Who can be confident that she would
have failed either to divide her judges, or to accumulate such elements
of strength that she might dare to defy them? A League of Nations would
work well only if its verdicts were loyally accepted by all the nations
composing it. To make majority-rule possible you must have a community
made up of members who are reasonably well informed upon one another's
affairs, and who are bound together by a tie of loyalty strong