Page:Secrets of Crewe House.djvu/306

230 or a large navy. Some will advocate, as an act of punishment or of justice, the disarmament of other nations. In the consequent negotiations it will soon be found that to insist on an unduly large army or navy is to saddle one's country with a huge expense; to insist on the disarmament of another country may be to present that country with a huge annual income that can be used in commercial rivalry. And so we may come to a condition in which, if there be international security, there will be a contest, not as to which country shall maintain the largest navy and the largest army, but as to which country shall most completely disarm.

I foresee international Commissions at work for a long time, trying to establish frontiers, conditions of Parliamentary responsibility, canons of international law, rules of international commerce, laws even of religious freedom, and a thousand other conditions of national organisation. In the very act of seeking the foundation for a League of Free Nations, and in slowly building up the fabric, we shall get rid of the passions and fears of war. By the mere endeavour to find the way to a better condition of the world, we shall bring this better condition about.

This article created the desired interest and public discussion in the enemy countries. It was widely reproduced by German newspapers and it had the effect of producing a state of mind which culminated in the complete collapse of German resistance. It was a fitting wind-up to the work of propaganda in enemy countries. The article gave