And similarly, I do not see how any effectual disarmament is possible in Europe or how any dealing with the economic and financial situation there can be possible unless America is prepared to bind itself in an alliance of mutual protection and accommodation with at least France, Germany, Britain and Italy to sustain a similar series of conferences and adjustments. At the back of the French refusal to disarm there is a suppressed demand for a protective alliance. That is an entirely reasonable demand. The form of this alliance that the French have demanded hitherto is an entangling alliance, an alliance of America and Britain and France against, at least, Germany and Russia. The necessary alliance to which France and Britain will presently assent, and which America will come to recognize as the only way to its peacemaking aims, will be against no one; it is an alliance of an entirely beneficial character, an alliance not to entangle but to release. The disposition of the European delegations and of the British and foreign writers at Washington to treat the idea of America making treaties of alliance as outside the range of possibility, as indeed an idea _tabu_, seems to me a profoundly mistaken one. It is “Tact” in its extremest form. I have heard talk of the “immense inertia” of political dogmas held for a hundred years. For “immense inertia” I would rather write “expiring impulse.” The policy of non-interference in affairs outside America was an excellent thing, no doubt, for a young Republic in the self-protective state; it is a policy entirely unworthy of a Republic which has now become the predominant state in the world. XIX AN ASSOCIATION OF NATIONS The futility of the idea of a limitation of armaments or any limitation of warfare as a possible remedy for the present distresses of mankind, without some sort of permanent settlement of the conflicts of interest and ambition which lie at the root of warfare, has grown clearer and clearer with each day’s work of the Washington Conference. And the conviction that no permanent settlement is conceivable without a binding alliance to sustain it also grows stronger each day. For security and peace in the Pacific an alliance of at least America, Britain and Japan is imperative, and Britain cannot play her part therein unless Europe is safe also, through a binding alliance of at least France, Germany, Britain and America. To arrest the economic decadence of the world a still wider bond is needed.