But it is not with the immediate military advantages of a Balkan League that I am most concerned. A Balkan League of Peace, for mutual protection, will be an absolute necessity in a regenerated Europe. It is necessary for the tranquillity of the world. It is necessary if the Wiltshire farmer is to herd his sheep in peace; it is necessary if people are to be prosperous and happy in Chicago and Yokohama. Perhaps “Balkan League” is now an insufficiently extensive word, since Rumania is not in the Balkan Peninsula, and Italy must necessarily be involved in any enduring settlement. But it is clear that the settlement of Europe upon liberal lines involves the creation of these various ten-to-twenty-million-people States, none of them powerful enough to be secure alone, but amounting in the aggregate to the greatest power in Europe, and it is equally clear that they must be linked by some common bond and understanding. There can be no doubt of the very serious complication of all these possibilities by the jerry-built dynastic interests that have been unhappily run up in these new States. It is unfortunate that we have to reckon not only with peoples but kings. Such a monarchy as that of Servia or Bulgaria narrows, personifies, intensifies and misrepresents national feeling. National hatreds and national ambitions can no doubt be at times very malign influences in the world’s affairs, but it is the greed and vanities of exceptional monarchs, of the Napoleons and Fredericks the Great, and so forth, that bring these vague, vast feelings to an edge and a crisis. And it will be these same concentrated and over individualised purposes, these little gods of the coin and postage stamp that will stand most in the way of a reasonable Schweitzerisation and pacification of south-eastern Europe. The more clearly this is recognised in Europe now, the less likely are they, the less able will they be to obstruct a sane settlement. On our side, at least, this is a war of nations and not of princes.