favor of the northern
unity. The only objection to large political units is that they make
extremely dangerous autocracies. But as groups of federated democracies
they are the best neighbours in the world. A federal democratic Russia
would be as safe a colleague as America: a federal democratic Germany
would be as pleasant company as Switzerland. Let us, I beg, hear no more
of little States as British Dulcineas.

*The Claims of Belgium.*

As to the special case of Belgium, its claims in the settlement are
simple and indeed single. If we conclude a peace without clearing the
Germans completely out of Belgium, we shall be either beaten or
dishonoured. And such indemnity as a money payment can effect for
Belgium is due not only by Germany, but by Britain, France, and Russia
as well. Belgium has been crushed between the Alliance and the Entente:
it was these two menaces to the peace of Europe that produced
Armageddon; and as Belgium's heroic resistance served the Entente
against the Alliance, the obligation to make good the remediable damage
is even more binding on the Entente.

But there is another and more pressing matter arising out of the
conquest of Belgium.

*The Belgian Refugees and the Problem of Unemployment.*

As I write these lines the descent on our shores of an army of refugees
from captured Antwerp and threatened Ostend has forced the President of
the Local Government Board to make a desperate appeal to all and sundry
to form representative committees to deal with the prevention and relief
of distress: in other words to save the refugees from starving to death.
Now the Board of Trade has already drawn attention to a memorandum of
the Local Government Board as to the propriety of providing employment
for refugees. And instantly and inevitably the condition had to be laid
down that if the Committees find employment for anyone, they shall refer
the case to the local Labour Exchange in order that "any steps taken to
assist refugees to find employment shall not be such as to endanger the
employment of British workpeople." In other words, the starving Belgians
have fled from the Germans only to compete for crust with starving
Englishmen. As long as there is an unemployed Englishman in the
country--and there are a good many, especially in the cotton
industry--how is it possible to give a job to a Belgian without
depriving an Englishman of it? Why, instead of making impossible
conditions, and helplessly aski