“You cannot comprehend at a thought what is meant by this balance of power. If the record could be brought before you—but it is not possible to the eye of humanity to scan the scroll upon which are recorded the sufferings which the theory of the balance of power has entailed upon this country. It rises up before me when I think of it as a ghastly phantom ... which has loaded the nation with debt and with taxes, has sacrificed the lives of hundreds of thousands of Englishmen, has desolated the homes of millions of families, and has left us, as the great result of the profligate expenditure which it has caused, a doubled peerage at one end of the social scale, and far more than a doubled pauperism at the other.” [Sidenote: It must be superseded by a council of nations.] For a system therefore which carries with it the implication that the interests of nations are necessarily in constant conflict and which involves the permanent division of Europe into two hostile competing groups, we must substitute machinery which will facilitate cooperation and a reasonable solution of differences between all the peoples of the world. The objective should be a real council of the nations with at first very limited powers, rather an expansion of an alliance of three Powers against three, into a league of six Powers, designed to act against any one recalcitrant member which might threaten the peace of the whole. To this ideal, indeed, the pronouncement of Mr. Asquith in his Dublin speech has already pointed, while it is noteworthy that Sir Edward Grey himself seems in a significant passage of one of his despatches to admit the failure of the balance principle and to indicate that the nations must “start afresh” on the basis of a general council. This passage is as follows: “If the peace of Europe can be preserved, and the present crisis safely passed, my own endeavor will be to promote some arrangement to which Germany could be a party, by which she could be assured that no aggressive or hostile policy would be pursued against her or her allies by France, Russia, and ourselves, jointly or separately. I have desired this and worked for it as far as I could through the last Balkan crisis; and Germany having a corresponding object, our relations sensibly improved. The idea has hitherto been too Utopian to form the subject of definite proposals, but if this present crisis, so much more acute than any Europe has gone through for generations, be safely passed, I am hopeful that the relief and reaction which will follow may make possible some more definite _rapprochement_ between the Powers than has been possible hitherto.” It is from some such simple beginning, pursued with good will and perseverance by all parties, that the nations may hope to arrive at a system of cooperation to replace the system of hostile alliances, the fruits of which are the present war.