Prince Bülow's words, and the theory of policy underlying them, really go to the root of the whole trouble in European politics. They explain the Balance of Power, the competition in armaments, the belief in the inevitability and the moral value of war, and all those common European shibboleths which seem so inexplicable to citizens of the more modern-minded States and communities of the world. Why should Germany and Austria arm against France and Russia when Canada does not arm against the United States? Why should a Balance of Power be necessary to the maintenance of European Peace when we do not consider the preponderance of a single Power, such as the United States in North, Central and South America, or Great Britain in the Pacific or Southern Asia dangerous to the peace of the whole world? Why, finally, to press Prince Bülow's logic home, if members of different nationalities cannot live side by side without playing the game of Hammer and Anvil together, are not the English spending the whole of their energy fighting the Welsh, the Scotch, and the Irish in the United Kingdom, the Dutch in South Africa, and the French in Canada, not to speak of the Jews in every part of the British Empire? The fact is that the statesmen of Germany and Austria-Hungary, and of Russia also, have missed the chief lesson of recent history and politics: that in the growing complexity of world-relations power is falling more and more, of necessity, into the hands of States which are not Nations but Commonwealths of Nations, States composed, like the British Empire and the United States, of a variety of nationalities and "cultures," living peacefully, each with its own institutions, under a single law and a single central government. But the time is not ripe yet for a Commonwealth of Europe. The peoples of Europe have yet to win their liberties before they can be free to dream of a United States of Europe. So long as the Emperors and statesmen of Central Europe believe, like the Mahomedans of old, that propaganda can be imposed by the sword, they can only be met by the sword, and controlled by the sword. Not till they have been conquered and rendered harmless, or displaced by the better mind of the peoples whom they have indoctrinated, can Europe proceed along the natural course of her development. So far we have been concerned--as we shall be concerned throughout this book--with the _political_ causes underlying the war. But it would not be right to ignore the fact that there are other deeper causes, unconnected with the actions of governments, for which we in this country are jointly responsible with the rest of the civilised world.