It is hard at present for the leaders of a belligerent nation to come prominently forward in favour of such a scheme as this. For one thing they cannot act without their Allies; for another, they must not lay themselves open to the charge that they are spending their time and thought on any object but the winning of the war. Still, there is little doubt about the general attitude of the leaders of public opinion in England towards a scheme of this kind. Mr. Asquith, Mr. Balfour, and Viscount Grey, among others, have spoken pretty clearly. "Long before this war," said the last named, on May 15, 1916, "I hoped for a league of nations that would be united, quick, and instant to prevent, and, if need be, to punish the violation of international treaties, of public right, of national independence, and would say to nations that came forward with grievances and claims: 'Put them before an impartial tribunal. If you can win at this bar you will get what you want. If you cannot you shall not have what you want. And if instead you attempt to start a war, we shall adjudge you the common enemy of humanity and treat you accordingly.' Unless mankind learns from this war to avoid war the struggle will have been in vain." Almost all opinion in England agrees; so, as far as my information goes, does opinion in France. But in America the course of events has brought the movement more sharply to the front and faced it with a far more emphatic alternative. If we and our Allies respond to this movement there is good hope for the world; the enemy may respond or not, as he prefers. If we reject it there is before us not merely the possibility of some unknown future war, such as there was before the present shaping of the nations; there is a peril clearer and more precise. There are definite seeds of international rivalry already sown and growing; there are on both sides of the Atlantic the deliberate beginnings of a movement which, however justifiable at present, needs but a little development to become dangerous; there is the certain prospect of those thousand disputes which are bound to arise between two great commercial nations competing hard for the same markets. American preparedness will soon be an accomplished fact; American readiness for a League to Enforce Peace after the war is probably a fact already. We must not, of course, be precipitate; we must not forget that our actual Allies have obviously the first claim on us. We must not make any claim as of right on American sympathy, or ask her for a jot more than she is prepared to offer. But in the end it will rest largely, though not entirely, with us in Great Britain to decide whether that preparedness shall be merely an instrument for the promotion of American interests against those of her rivals, or a great force to work in conjunction with us and our friends for organising the peace of the world. On those lines Alliance will be possible after all.