ist
course and proposing extensions of their own systems to the suffering
belligerents.

But nothing of the sort occurs. And when you come to look into the
circumstances of these two Presidents you will discover that neither of
them is any more free than anybody else to embark upon the task of
creating a State-overriding, war-preventing organisation of the world.
He has been created by a system, and he is bound to a system; his
concern is with the interests of the people of Switzerland or of the
United States of America. President Wilson, for example, is quite
sufficiently occupied by the affairs of the White House, by the clash of
political parties, by interferences with American overseas trade and the
security of American citizens. He has no more time to give to projects
for the fundamental reconstruction of international relationships than
has any recruit drilling in England, or any captain on an ocean liner,
or any engineer in charge of a going engine.

We are all, indeed, busy with the things that come to hand every day. We
are all anxious for a permanent world peace, but we are all up to the
neck in things that leave us no time to attend to this world peace that
nearly every sane man desires.

Meanwhile, a small minority of people who trade upon
contention--militarists, ambitious kings and statesmen, war contractors,
loan mongers, sensational journalists--follow up their interests and
start and sustain war.

There lies the paradoxical reality of this question. Our first inquiry
lands us into the elucidation of this deadlock. Nearly everybody desires
a world peace, and yet there is not apparent anywhere any man free and
able and willing to establish it, while, on the other hand, there are a
considerable number of men in positions of especial influence and power
who will certainly resist the arrangements that are essential to its
establishment.

But does this exhaust the question, and must we conclude that mankind is
doomed to a perpetual, futile struggling of States and nations and
peoples--breaking ever and again into war? The answer to that would
probably, be "Yes" if it were not for the progress of war. War is
continually becoming more scientific, more destructive, more coldly
logical, more intolerant of non-combatants, and more exhausting of any
kind of property. There is every reason to believe that it will continue
to intensify these characteristics. By doing so it may presently bring
about a state of