Page:Democratic Ideals and Reality (1919).djvu/230

218 not necessary, if your League of Nations is to have any chance of success, to face this cumulative evidence and not to gloss it over?

Is there not also another Reality with which you must reckon; the Reality of the Going Concern? If the nations of your League are to settle down to a quiet life, there are two different ways, it seems to me, in which you will have to face the Reality of the Going Concern; in respect of the Present and of the Future. What is meant by this Reality in the Present will best be conveyed by concrete consideration of the States available as the units to be leagued together.

The British Empire is a Going Concern. You will not persuade a majority of Britons to risk the coherence of the Empire, which has so triumphantly stood the test of this War, for any paper scheme of a Universal League. It follows, therefore, that the governing units of the British Empire can only grow by gradual process into their place as units of your League. Yet the relations of six of them are already, in fact, the relations of equality and, under their British League, of independency. Only last year was the last word said in that matter. The Prime Ministers of the Dominions are henceforth to communicate directly with the Prime