Page:Democratic Ideals and Reality (1919).djvu/227

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THE FREEDOM OF NATIONS
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pendent States, with a total of more than sixty million people, traversed by railways linking them securely with one another, and having access through the Adriatic, Black, and Baltic Seas with the Ocean, will together effectively balance the Germans of Prussia and Austria, and nothing less will suffice for that purpose. None the less the League of Nations should have the right under International Law of sending War fleets into the Black and Baltic Seas.

This great deed of International Statesmanship accomplished, and there would appear to be no impossibility of realising the democratic ideal, the League of Nations, whose mirage has haunted our Western peoples from afar over the desert of War. What are the essential conditions which must be fulfilled if you are to have a real and potent League of Nations? Viscount Grey, in his recent pamphlet, laid down two such conditions. The first was that 'the Idea must be adopted with earnestness and conviction by the Executive Heads of States.' The second was that 'the Governments and Peoples of the States willing to found it understand clearly that it will impose some limitation upon the national