Page:Democratic Ideals and Reality (1919).djvu/232

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DEMOCRATIC IDEALS AND REALITY

name Versailles has now an added historic meaning. No longer merely through their Ambassadors, but in the persons of their Prime Ministers, the United Kingdom, France, and Italy have acquired the habit of taking counsel together. These three countries of West Europe are not unfitted by any decisive inequality of size to be fellow members of a League. Is it not probable that occasions will occur when the Prime Ministers of Canada and Australia may be called into conference with the Prime Ministers of the United Kingdom, France, and Italy? They will be occasions of all the more value if you recognise the Going Concerns of to-day and do not attempt to make merely paper progress. Remember that it required the peril of the German offensive of 1918 to secure the unity of strategical command.[1]

Then what of the United States? There is no good in pretending that the separate American States can be units in your League; the Republic fought the greatest War in History, before this War, in order to weld them together. Yet the United States form something very like a predominant partner as against the separate allied countries of

  1. Since this was written the Paris Conference has treated the British Empire as a hybrid—a unit for some purposes.