It will lie in the power of England, France, Russia, Italy, Japan and the United States, if Germany and Austria are shattered in this war, to forbid the further building of any more ships of war at all; to persuade, and if need be, to oblige the minor Powers to sell their navies and to refuse the seas to armed ships not under the control of the confederation. To launch an armed ship can be made an invasion of the common territory of the world. This will be an open possibility in 1915. It will remain an open possibility until men recover from the shock of this conflict. As that begins to be forgotten so this will cease to be a possibility again—perhaps for hundreds of years. Already human intelligence and honesty have contrived to keep the great American lakes and the enormous Canadian frontier disarmed for a century. Warlike folly has complained of that, but it has never been strong enough to upset it. What is possible on that scale is possible universally, so soon as the armament trader is put out of mischief. And with the Confederated Peace Powers keeping the seas and guaranteeing the peaceful freedom of the seas to all mankind, treating the transport of armed men and war material, except between one detached part of a State and another, as contraband, and impartially blockading all belligerents, those who know best the significance of the sea power will realise best the reduction in the danger of extensive wars on land. This is no dream. This is the plain common sense of the present opportunity. It may be urged that this is a premature discussion, that this war is still undecided. But, indeed, there can be no decision to this war for France and England at any rate but the defeat of Germany, the abandonment of German militarism, the destruction of the German fleet, and the creation of this opportunity. Nothing short of that is tolerable; we must fight on to extinction rather than submit to a dishonouring peace in defeat or to any premature settlement. The fate of the world under triumphant Prussianism and Kruppism for the next two hundred years is not worth discussing. There is no conceivable conclusion to this war but submission at Berlin. There is no reasonable course before us now but to give all our strength for victory and the establishment of victory. The end must be victory or our effacement. What will happen after our effacement is for the Germans to consider.