ica. It does not seem to
matter what thousand other things America may happen to be, seeing that
it is also that. And so, just as I cling to the belief, in spite of
hundreds of adverse phenomena, that the religious and social stir of
these times must ultimately go far to unify mankind under the kingship
of God, so do I cling also to the persuasion that there are intellectual
forces among the rational elements in the belligerent centres, among
the other neutrals and in America, that will co-operate in enabling the
United States to play that role of the Unimpassioned Third Party, which
becomes more and more necessary to a generally satisfactory ending of
the war.

4

The idea that the settlement of this war must be what one might call an
unimpassioned settlement or, if you will, a scientific settlement or a
judicial and not a treaty settlement, a settlement, that is, based upon
some conception of what is right and necessary rather than upon the
relative success or failure of either set of belligerents to make its
Will the standard of decision, is one that, in a great variety of forms
and partial developments, I find gaining ground in the most different
circles. The war was an adventure, it was the German adventure under the
Hohenzollern tradition, to dominate the world. It was to be the last of
the Conquests. It has failed. Without calling upon the reserve strength
of America the civilised world has defeated it, and the war continues
now partly upon the issue whether it shall be made for ever impossible,
and partly because Germany has no organ but its Hohenzollern
organisation through which it can admit its failure and develop its
latent readiness for a new understanding on lines of mutual toleration.
For that purpose nothing more reluctant could be devised than
Hohenzollern imperialism. But the attention of every new combatant--it
is not only Germany now--has been concentrated upon military
necessities; every nation is a clenched nation, with its powers of
action centred in its own administration, bound by many strategic
threats and declarations, and dominated by the idea of getting and
securing advantages. It is inevitable that a settlement made in a
conference of belligerents alone will be shortsighted, harsh, limited by
merely incidental necessities, and obsessed by the idea of hostilities
and rivalries continuing perennially; it will be a trading of advantages
for subsequent attacks. It will be a settlement altog