This, to my thinking, so wholly advisable, would inspire more hopefulness, if the condition of Europe was not so terribly confused, and if the most salient characteristics of human nature were not elasticity, bluntness of imagination, and shortness of memory. Those of us who, while affirming the principle of the League, are afraid of committing ourselves to what obviously cannot at the start be a perfect piece of machinery, seem inclined to forget that if the assembled Statesmen fail to _place in running order, now_, some definite machinery for the consideration of international disputes, the chance will certainly slip. We cannot reckon on more than a very short time during which the horror of war will rule our thoughts and actions. And during that short time it is essential that the League should have had some tangible success in preventing war. Mankind puts its faith in facts, not theories; in proven, and not in problematic, success. One can imagine with what profound suspicion and contempt the armed individualists of the Neolithic Age regarded the first organised tribunal; with what surprise they found that it actually worked so well that they felt justified in dropping their habit of taking the lives and property of their neighbours first and thinking over it afterwards. Not till the Tribunal of the League of Nations has had successes of conciliation, visible to all, will the armed individualist nations of to-day begin to rub their cynical and suspicious eyes, and to sprinkle their armour with moth-powder. No one who, like myself, has recently experienced the sensation of landing in America after having lived in Europe throughout the war, can fail to realise the reluctance of Americans to commit themselves, and the difficulty Americans have in realising the need for doing so. But may I remind Americans that during the first years of the war there was practically the same general American reluctance to interfere in an old-world struggle; and that in the end America found that it was not an old-world but a world-struggle. It is entirely reasonable to dislike snatching chestnuts out of the fire for other people, and to shun departure from the letter of cherished tradition; but things do not stand still in this world; storm centres shift; and live doctrine often becomes dead dogma.