Note where the fundamental dishonesties of our propaganda lead us in the matter of policy, in what we declared to be one of the main objects of the War: the erection of Europe upon a basis of nationality. Our whole campaign implied that the problem resolved itself into the destruction of one great Power, who denied that principle, as against the Allies, who were ready to grant it. How near that came to the truth, the round score of 'unredeemed' nationalities deliberately created by the Allies in the Treaties sufficiently testifies. If we had avowed the facts, that a Europe of completely independent nationalities is not possible, that great populations will not be shut off from the sea, or recognise independent nationalities to the extent of risking economic or political strangulation, we should then necessarily have gone on to devise the limitations and obligations which all must accept and the rights which all must accord. We should have been fighting for a body of principles as the basis of a real association of States. The truth, or some measure of it, would have prepared us all for that limitation of independence without which no nationality can be secure. The falsehood that Germany alone stood in the way of the recognition of nationality, made a treaty really based on that principle (namely, upon all of us consenting to limit our independence) impossible of acceptance by our own opinion. And one falsehood leads to another. Because we refused to be sincere about the inducements which we held out in turn to Italy, Bulgaria, Rumania, Greece, we staggered blindly into the alternative betrayal first of one party, then of another. Just as we were faithless to the principle of nationality when we acquiesced in the Russian attitude towards Finland and Poland, and the Italian towards Serbia, so later we were to prove faithless to the principle of the Great State when we supported the Border Nationalities in their secession from Russia. We have encouraged and helped States like Ukrainia, Azerbaidjan. But we have been just as ready to stand for 'Great Russia,' if Koltchak appeared to be winning, knowing perfectly well that we cannot be loyal to both causes. Our defence is apparent enough. It is fairly illustrated in the case of Italy. If Italy had not come into the war, Serbia's prospect of any redemption at all would have been hopeless; we were doing the best we could for Serbia.[92] Assuredly--but we happened to be doing it by false pretences, sham heroics, immeasurable hypocrisy. And the final effect was to be the defeat of the aims for which we were fighting. If our primary aims had been those we proclaimed, we could no more have violated the principle of nationality to gain an ally, than we could have ceded the Isle of Wight to Germany, and the intellectual rectitude which would have enabled us to see that, would also have enabled us to see the necessity of the conditions on which alone a society of nations is possible.