Page:Jay William Hudson - A Practical International Program.pdf/9

 danger which the participation of neutral nations in the negotiations is designed to meet.

But I wonder if there is not a surer and more feasible way of influencing the terms of peace at the close of the war in favor of a stable international order. Remember this: at the close of the present war public opinion in Europe will have more influence upon government than ever before. This great catastrophe has affected the average man and woman in Europe as no other catastrophe within the memory of man. Before the war, public opinion in Europe had gradually been educated to more and more of an international viewpoint. National and race differences had been lessened through the myriad means of intercommunication between races and nations and through friendly co-operation in all the great vital interests of civilization. The war came upon public opinion as more or less of a surprise and a shock, and it is not at all inconceivable that when this war shall close, public opinion shall have been educated through its bitter and tragic experience to make itself heard and felt as never before in the history of Europe. Autocracies and bureaucracies there still will be; but they will tend to be more merely nominal in their absolute powers than in the past. European rulers and counselors had already learned before this war that the conviction of the masses must be reckoned with. After this war they will have to reckon with it still more seriously; for nothing teaches individuals or nations like the school of experience, and the European war has taught the average man lessons which will not be forgotten for generations to come. Democracy may indeed be slow in coming, but public opinion, nevertheless, will have a vast deal to do in preventing terms of peace of a sort which would be likely to menace the future security of the common