still,
unfortunately, the polity of certain European states. But the idea
is a survival and--and this is the important point--an admission of
failure to understand where right lies: to "fight it out" is the
remedy of the boy who for the life of him cannot see who is right
and who is wrong.

At ten years of age we are all quite sure that piracy is a finer
calling than trade, and the pirate a finer fellow than the Shylock
who owns the ship--which, indeed, he may well be. But as we grow up
(which some of the best of us never do) we realise that piracy is
not the best way to establish the ownership of cargoes, any more
than the ordeal is the way to settle cases at law, or the rack of
proving a dogma, or the Spanish American method the way to settle
differences between Liberals and Conservatives.

And just as civil adjustments are made most efficiently, as they
are in England (say), as distinct from South America, by a general
agreement not to resort to force, so it is the English method in
the international field which gives better results than that based
on force. The relationship of Great Britain to Canada or Australia
is preferable to the relationship of Russia to Finland or Poland,
or Germany to Alsace-Lorraine. The five nations of the British
Empire have, by agreement, abandoned the use of force as between
themselves. Australia may do us an injury--exclude our subjects,
English or Indian, and expose them to insult--but we know very well
that force will not be used against her. To withhold such force is
the basis of the relationship of these five nations; and, given a
corresponding development of ideas, might equally well be the basis
of the relationship of fifteen--about all the nations of the world
who could possibly fight. The difficulties Mr. Chesterton
imagines--an international tribunal deciding in favour of Austria
concerning the recession of Venice and Lombardy, and summoning the
forces of United Europe to coerce Italy into submission--are, of
course, based on the assumption that a United Europe, having
arrived at such understanding as to be able to sink its
differences, would be the same kind of Europe that it is now, or
was a generation ago. If European statecraft advances sufficiently
to surrender the use of force against neighbou