I do not think that the obstructive possibilities of the existing League of Nations are sufficiently understood by liberal-minded people throughout the world. I do not think they realise how effectively it may be used as a consumer and waster of the creative energy that would otherwise carry us forward toward World Confederation. The League of Nations that we saw in our visions in those distressful and yet creative years, 1917-18, was to have been a real step forward in human affairs. It was to have been a repetition on a gigantic scale of that magnificent turning-point in the history of America when it was decided that the conferring representatives of the liberated colonies should talk no longer of the people of Virginia, the people of Georgia, and the people of Massachusetts, but instead of the people of the United States. So in a wider stride we were to begin to forget the particular interests of the people of Germany and of the people of France and of the people of England in a new realisation of the common needs and dangers and sacrifices of the people of the world. So we hoped. So we still try to hope. But that was far too wide a stride for humanity to take all at once. The League we desired was to have been the first loose conference that would have ended in a federal government for the whole earth. It was to have controlled war establishments from the start, constricted or abolished all private armament firms, created and maintained a world standard of currency, of labour legislation, of health and education, watched the world production of staple articles for the common good, restricted malignant tariff hostilities, negotiated and regulated the migrations of populations, and made the ways of the world, the high seas, and the international land routes alike open and safe for all decent men. So we saw it as a new, brave assertion of human sanity and of the right of all men to a certain fullness of life, against old hates, old prejudices, old debts and claims and limitations. And there seemed to some of us to be sufficient will in the world then for so bold and great a beginning. I wonder--empty speculation though it is now--if we were indeed so wrong in thinking that--if some man or group of men of supreme genius might not have achieved a real world peace even in 1919. All over the world there were millions of people, prepared by immense sufferings and fears for so drastic a change. There were great masses of people everywhere mentally ready for that League. For many months President Wilson, simply because he had said “League of Nations” plainly and clearly, was the greatest man on earth. He overshadowed Kings and Emperors.