Humanity has an instinctive craving for something eternal, absolute, petrified. This seems to be a fundamental factor in our psychology: it has obtruded itself equally in spheres as diverse as religion and politics, but it has been especially dominant in diplomacy. Whenever the European organism proves its instability by breaking down, we start in quest of a perfect mechanism, a “permanent settlement.” We are invariably disappointed, but invariably we return to the quest again. The Congress of statesmen at Vienna followed this will-o’-the-wisp in 1814: in 1915 the belligerent democracies are preparing to lead themselves the same dance. “Europe is in a mess,” we are all saying: “Let us tidy her up ‘once for all,’ and then we can live comfortably ever after.” We might as well expect a baby to “live comfortably ever after” in its swaddling clothes.... [Sidenote: The European organism is full of dynamic life.] So it is with the European organism. It is as full of life, as perpetually in transformation, as the individual national molecules of which it is woven, yet we confuse it in turn with each of its transitory garments. If we are to find a satisfactory issue out of the present crisis, we must begin by correcting our standpoint. The impending settlement will not be permanent, and the better it fits the situation, the less permanent will it be.... Our real work will be to regulate this immediate settlement so that it varies in harmony with the subsequent growth of Europe and modifies its structure and mechanism to meet the organism’s changing needs. We have now discovered the flaw in guarantees of the old order. They were framed for rigidity, and therefore were doomed to crack. Our new guarantees must be elastic: they must be forged of steel not cast in iron. How can we frame guarantees of this malleable character?... (i.) Firstly, we propose guarantees of political independence and integrity in the case of the three Scandinavian States, the Slovene Unit, the Greek islands off Anatolia, Persia, and the Sultanate of Oman. The autonomy guaranteed to Poland within the Russian Empire comes under the same head. (ii.) Secondly, we propose to guarantee economic rights-of-way to one State across the political territory of another. Instances of this type are the Russian railway through Norway to the Atlantic and through Persia to the Indian Ocean; Poland’s title to free trade down the Vistula, and to the enjoyment of a free port at Danzig; and Germany’s similar claim to an unhampered outlet at Trieste. Both these classes of guarantee are adapted from the international machinery invented during the nineteenth century. The first class is an extension of the political guarantee given to Belgium in 1839, the second of the economic right-of-way secured to her through Dutch waters, in order to furnish the commerce of Antwerp with a free passage down the estuary of the Scheldt to the open sea. [Sidenote: No settlement can be permanent.]