ith coercive powers. The dispute between Austria and
Sardinia must have been referred to that tribunal. That tribunal
must have been guided by existing treaties. The Treaty of Vienna
was perhaps the most authoritative ever entered into by European
Powers. By that treaty, Venice and Lombardy were unquestionably
assigned to Austria. A just tribunal administering international
law _must_ have decided in favour of Austria, and have used the
whole armed force of Europe to coerce Italy into submission. Are
those Pacifists, who try at the same time to be Democrats, prepared
to acquiesce in such a conclusion? Personally, I am not.

I replied as follows:

Mr. Cecil Chesterton says that the question which I have raised is
this: "Should usurers go to war?"

That, of course, is not true. I have never, even by implication,
put such a problem, and there is nothing in the article which he
criticises, nor in any other statement of my own, that justifies
it. What I have asked is whether peoples should go to war.

I should have thought it was pretty obvious that, whatever happens,
usurers do not go to war: the peoples go to war, and the peoples
pay, and the whole question is whether they should go on making war
and paying for it. Mr. Chesterton says that if they are wise they
will; I say that if they are wise they will not.

I have attempted to show that the prosperity of peoples--by which,
of course, one means the diminution of poverty, better houses, soap
and water, healthy children, lives prolonged, conditions
sufficiently good to ensure leisure and family affection, fuller
and completer lives generally--is not secured by fighting one
another, but by co-operation and labour, by a better organisation
of society, by improved human relationship, which, of course, can
only come of better understanding of the conditions of that
relationship, which better understanding means discussion,
adjustment, a desire and capacity to see the point of view of the
other man--of all of which war and its philosophy is the negation.

To all of this Mr. Chesterton replies: "That only concerns the Jews
and the moneylenders." Again, this is not true. It concerns all of
us, like all problems of our struggle with Nature. It is in part at
least an economic problem, and that part of it