aditions;
each may become an easy prey to dynastic follies and the aggressive
obsessions of diplomacy. Centuries of bloody rearrangement may lie
before this East Central belt of Europe.

To the liberal idealist the thought of a possible Swiss system or group
of Swiss systems comes readily to mind. One thinks of a grouping of
groups of Republics, building up a United States of Eastern Europe. But
neither Hohenzollerns nor Tsar would welcome that. The arm of democratic
France is not long enough to reach to help forward such a development,
and Great Britain is never sure whether she is a "Crowned Republic" or a
Germanic monarchy. Hitherto in the Balkans she has lent her influence
chiefly to setting up those treacherous little German kings who have
rewarded her so ill. The national monarchs of Serbia and Montenegro have
alone kept faith with civilisation. I doubt, however, if Great Britain
will go on with that dynastic policy. She herself is upon the eve of
profound changes of spirit and internal organisation. But whenever one
thinks of the possibilities of Republican development in Europe as an
outcome of this war, it is to realise the disastrous indifference of
America to the essentials of the European situation. The United States
of America could exert an enormous influence at the close of the war in
the direction of a liberal settlement and of liberal institutions....
They will, I fear, do nothing of the sort.

It is here that the possibility of some internal change in Germany
becomes of such supreme importance. The Hohenzollern Imperialism towers
like the black threat of a new Caesarism over all the world. It may
tower for some centuries; it may vanish to-morrow. A German revolution
may destroy it; a small group of lunacy commissioners may fold it up and
put it away. But should it go, it would at least take with it nearly
every crown between Hamburg and Constantinople. The German kings would
vanish like a wisp of smoke. Suppose a German revolution and a
correlated step forward towards liberal institutions on the part of
Russia, then the whole stage of Eastern Europe would clear as fever goes
out of a man. This age of international elbowing and jostling, of
intrigue and diplomacy, of wars, massacres, deportations _en masse_, and
the continual fluctuation of irrational boundaries would come to an end
forthwith.

So sweeping a change is the extreme possibility. The probability is of
something less lucid and more prosai