Page:The Great problems of British statesmanship.djvu/13



World War has created a number of most important problems which statesmanship will have to solve during the coming Peace Congress and afterwards. These may conveniently be divided into three classes: Problems of foreign policy, such as the delimitation of the national frontiers and the creation of an international organisation devised to ensure a durable peace; economic problems, such as the re-creation of national prosperity among the war-stricken nations, the management and the repayment of the gigantic war debt, the improvement of the relations between capital and labour, &c.; problems of internal organisation, such as the reform of democratic government which, during the War, in many instances has proved disappointing because of its amateurishness, dilatoriness, improvidence, and inefficiency. All these problems will be considered in the following pages.

Nothing is permanent in this world except change. The great problems of statesmanship can be given only a temporary solution. States and nations rise, grow, stand still, decline, decay, and ultimately disappear. The civilisation and even the languages of the world empires of antiquity have vanished. Cæsar, when conquering the savage inhabitants of Britain who were dressed in skins and who ornamented themselves by painting their bodies with woad, would have laughed had a native Druid told him that the Roman Empire would fall, and that the British savages would not only conquer but civilise the larger part of the world, and create an Empire far greater than the Roman,