This war does afford an occasion
such as the world may never have again of tracing out the "natural map"
of mankind, the map that will secure the maximum of homogeneity and the
minimum of racial and economic freedom. All idealistic people hope for
a restored Poland. But it is a childish thing to dream of a contented
Poland with Posen still under the Prussian heel, with Cracow cut off,
and without a Baltic port. These claims of Poland to completeness have a
higher sanction than the mere give and take of belligerents in congress.
Moreover this International Tribunal, if it was indeed to prevent war,
would need also to have power to intervene in the affairs of any country
or region in a state of open and manifest disorder, for the protection
of foreign travellers and of persons and interests localised in that
country but foreign to it.
Such an agreement as I have here sketched out would at once lift
international politics out of the bloody and hopeless squalor of
the present conflict. It is, I venture to assert, the peace of the
reasonable man in any country whatever. But it needs the attention
of such a disengaged people as the American people to work it out and
supply it with--weight. It needs putting before the world with some sort
of authority greater than its mere entire reasonableness. Otherwise
it will not come before the minds of ordinary men with the effect of a
practicable proposition.
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