Let me note here in passing that the case for some Association of Nations to discuss and control the common interests of mankind rests on a wider basis than the mere prevention of war; the economic and social divisions and discords of mankind provide, perhaps, in the long run, a stronger and more conclusive argument for human unity than the mere war evil, but in this paper I will narrow the issue down to war, simply, and ask the reader to consider the probable nature of war in the future if the development of warfare is not checked by deliberate human effort. And I will not deal with the ill-equipped cut-throat war that has been going on, and, thanks to the divisions and rivalries of France and Britain, is likely still to go on in Eastern Europe for some time to come; the wars of the little, self-determined nations that the Treaty of Versailles set loose upon each other; the raids of Poland into Ukrainia, and of Roumania into Hungary; and of Serbia into Albania; the old-fashioned game enlivened by rape and robbery that was brought to its highest perfection long ago in the Thirty Years’ War. These are not so much wars as spasms of energy, phases of accelerated destruction, in the rotting body of East European civilization. But I mean the sort of war that will come if presently France attacks England, or if America and Japan start in for a good, long, mutually destructive struggle. You may say that war between France and England is unthinkable, but so far from that being the case, certain worthy souls in France have been thinking about it hard. Hard but not intelligently. They do not understand the moral impossibility of Britain fighting America, they have never heard of Canada, they have never examined the text of the Anglo-Japanese Alliance, and so they dream of a wonderful time when America will be fighting England and Japan, and when France, with magnificent gestures and with submarines and Senegalese at last gloriously justified, will “come to her aid.” So France will divide and rule and clamber to dizzy destinies. Blushing and embarrassed American statesmen have already had to listen, I guess, to some insidious whispers. Even among our distresses there is something amusing in the thought of this hot breath of Old World diplomacy on the fresh American cheek. I do not say that these are the thoughts and acts of France, or of any great section of the French people, but they are certainly the thoughts and proceedings of a noisy Nationalist minority in France which is at present in a position of dangerous ascendancy there.