A League of Nations may do good, but I am surprised that any one who has imagination and a knowledge of the facts should entertain high hopes of it as a full solution. There is a League of Nations to-day which has given a verdict against the Central Powers, and that verdict is being enforced by the most terrible War in all human history. If the verdict had been given before the War began, it may be said, then Germany might have accepted it, and refrained. So she might, but what then? She would have felt herself wronged; she would have deferred the War, and, in ways that she knows so well, would have set about making a party for herself among the nations of the League. Who can be confident that she would have failed either to divide her judges, or to accumulate such elements of strength that she might dare to defy them? A League of Nations would work well only if its verdicts were loyally accepted by all the nations composing it. To make majority-rule possible you must have a community made up of members who are reasonably well informed upon one another's affairs, and who are bound together by a tie of loyalty stronger and more enduring than their causes of difference. It would be a happy thing if the nations of the world made such a community; and the sufferings of this War have brought them nearer to desiring it. But those who believe that such a community can be formed to-day or to-morrow are too sanguine. It must not be forgotten that the very principle of the League, if its judgements are to take effect, involves a world-war in cases where a strong minority resists those judgements. Every war would become a world-war. Perhaps this very fact would prevent wars, but it cannot be said that experience favours such a conclusion. There is no escape for us by way of the Gospels. The Gospel precept to turn the other cheek to the aggressor was not addressed to a meeting of trustees. Christianity has never shirked war, or even much disliked it. Where the whole soul is set on things unseen, wounds and death become of less account. And if the Christians have not helped us to avoid war, how should the pacifists be of use? Those of them whom I happen to know, or to have met, have shown themselves, in the relations of civil life, to be irritable, self-willed, combative creatures, where the average soldier is calm, unselfish, and placable. There is something incongruous and absurd in the pacifist of British descent. He has fighting in his blood, and when his creed, or his nervous sensibility to physical horrors, denies him the use of fighting, his blood turns sour. He can argue, and object, and criticize, but he cannot lead. All that he can offer us in effect is eternal quarrels in place of occasional fights.