world. The Hague Conference was a World Council to preserve the peace of the world without any contingent employment of force. The Pan-American Congress, combining the objects of all three, is developing into a permanent Council of the Nations of the American continent. This co-operation among nations for the preservation, on the one hand, of order and law, and, on the other, of goodwill and peace, show that it is no mere dream to think that the Conferences at The Hague may become periodical, extend the range of their objects, and develop into a World Council.

Young nations in the buoyant venturesomeness of youth may be tempted to block the way of general progress towards that more or less permanent settlement of the affairs of mankind in which the older nations are setting an example. Isolation of any nation, however, is not only an economic but is also a military danger to itself in the presence of possible combinations of nations. Advantages for attack provoke a corresponding counter-development of the forces of resistance. A State which declines to listen to the peaceful overtures of its neighbours, on the ground that it would be quixotic to curtail its disproportionate ability to assail them, may find itself obliged, in the alternative, to increase its strength enormously for the purposes of possible defence. In some remarkable articles, the Times' "military correspondent" calculates that both Great Britain and Germany can still increase their military expenditure without national ruin. Much, however, as one appreciates his authority as a military expert, he is not necessarily an authority on economics, and, with all deference to him, expert opinion in such matters, as Lord Lansdowne recently said, is apt to lose sight of general considerations. No Englishman or German, having any general knowledge of the statecraft of the countries in question, will challenge the truth of the popular conviction that the expenditure on military armaments in both is the chief difficulty in the way of attempting the solution of problems, the gravity of which increases the longer they remain open. A statement like " our military expenditure is an insurance of 3 per

cent. on the national income, and of 0.4 per cent. on the national capital," is a mere metaphor. It is no answer to the demand to employ less of the enormous resources these proportions represent, on work which it is possible to render less necessary, while money cannot be found for things practically indispensable. With popular feeling in Great Britain, France, Germany, and Italy I have made a point of being in constant touch, and I have no fear of being contradicted when I say that the desire for a period of international tranquillity, and concentration on the solution of the social problems of the age is universal. Let it be hoped that no Power will take the responsibility of refusing its frank co-operation in the work of realising it.

I have to thank different Foreign Offices and other Government Departments for much courtesy and assistance in communicating to me information and documents which have not been made public.