It will be objected that such a new and untried institution could never have succeeded where the fine flower of diplomacy failed, or would have been merely a stalking horse for diplomatic intrigue and imperialistic interests. But an institution is strong in proportion to the public powers it has acquired and the public acquiescence in them: not in proportion to its degree of constitutional development, or the perfection of its machinery. A British parish council, with its carefully defined powers, can do little and does nothing. A German revolutionary communal council could do anything and does a good deal. The League of Nations would have given the Americans a means of expressing their moral and neutral policies and of exercising the pressure that President Wilson would not or could not apply. Even if the League had not succeeded in imposing respect for his "fourteen points" on the diplomats, and it might have done so, it would at least have regulated procedure. We should not have had vital decisions reached in a few minutes' talk one afternoon, and reversed for some unknown reason the next, without reference to expert conclusions or regard for principle and precedent. Also this procedure would have made it possible to deal with our main obstacles to a permanent peace, the secret treaties. We could not escape from these national diplomatic obligations in a diplomatic conference of national delegates. But we could have got a dispensation from them had they been referred to a supreme international and super-diplomatic authority. No doubt this procedure would have affected such questions as the international status of Germany and Ireland or India. Germany would have been admitted to the League in time to take part in arranging its own penalties and we should thereby have got the best guarantee possible for the permanence of the peace in respect to Germany. The Peace Treaty would thus have become a compact instead of a Coercion Act. As to Ireland, it is outside my scope: but as our national authority avowedly finds reconciliation of the two Irish factions insoluble, there would seem to be no great harm in trying what an international authority could do. On such lines as this, a League of Nations might have been established. As things are the League is, of course, no more than an alliance to enforce the imperialist and nationalist decisions of Paris on conquered races, and to combat revolution. It is a combination of a Balkan League and a Holy Alliance. The effect of this prostitution of a public ideal to the profiteering of the Paris conclave has made the peace as disastrous morally to Europe as was the war materially. The Treaties have, for a time, Bolshevised Eastern Europe, Balkanised Central Europe and Bottomleyised Western Europe.