These statements are not the facetious inventions of an irresponsible writer; they are fair samples of the sort of thing that the various deputations have brought with them to Washington. These are the things we talk of and are gradually talking out of sight. And if the Washington Conference served no other purpose at all in the world, it would have been quite worth while in order to get together all these totally incomparable conceptions of security and by that approximation to demonstrate their utter absurdity. Along the lines of either unregulated or regulated armament there can be no security for any race or people. The only security for a modern state now is _a binding and mutually satisfactory_ alliance with the power or powers that might otherwise attack. The only real security for France against a German revenge is a generous and complete understanding between the French and German Republics so that they will have a mutual interest in each other’s prosperity. Germany is naturally a rather bigger country than France, and nothing on earth can alter that. Other powers or all the powers may come into such a treaty as guarantors, but the essential thing for peace between France and Germany is peace made good and clear between them, a cessation of mutual injuries and hostile preparations. The only effectual security for the communications of the British Empire is the recognition by all mankind that this great system of English-speaking states round and about the world is a good thing for all mankind and a resolute effort of these states to keep to that level. There is no other real security. This is not “lofty idealism”; it is common sense; and the idea of “security” by armament and by the enfeeblement of possible rivals is not a “practical recognition of present limitations,” but a feeble surrender to entirely vicious tendencies of the human mind. I believe that for a little while yet Washington will continue its researches into the meaning of armed “security,” and that then it will turn its attention to the alternative idea, with which the nimble French mind has also been playing, and that is security by treaty. The French have been disposed in the past to welcome an Anglo-American-French treaty to guarantee France against attack. The idea in that form is dead, but the possibility of a far more comprehensive agreement, a loose-fitting but effectual association of all the nations of the world to keep the peace and arrange their differences by conference, is bound to recur again as the impossibility of disarmament without settlement becomes increasingly apparent.