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400 The Ideal of Human UnityUndoubtedly, the right of small nations to exist and asserttheir interests against imperialistic aggression is still a force; itwas one at least of the issues in the international collision. But theassertion of this right against the aggression of a single ambitiousPower is one thing; its assertion as against any arrangement forthe common interest of the nations decided upon by a majorityof the great Powers would very likely in the near future beregarded in quite another light. The inconvenience of a numberof small neutrals claiming to stand out and be as little affectedas possible by an immense international conflict was acutelyfelt not only by the actual combatants who were obliged to usesometimes an indirect, sometimes a direct pressure to minimisethe inconveniences, but by the smaller neutrals themselves towhom their neutrality was preferable only as a lesser evil thanthe burden and disaster of active participation in the struggle.In any international system, the self-assertion of these smallerliberties would probably be viewed as a petty egoism and intolerableobstacle to great common interests, or, it may be, tothe decision of conflicts between great world-wide interests. It isprobable indeed that in any constitution of international unitythe great Powers would see to it that their voice was equal to theirforce and influence; but even if the constitution were outwardlydemocratic, yet in effect it would become an oligarchy of thegreat Powers. Constitutions can only disguise facts, they cannotabrogate them: for whatever ideas the form of the constitutionmay embody, its working is always that of the actually realisedforces which can use it with effect. Most governments either havenow or have passed through a democratic form, but nowhereyet has there been a real democracy; it has been everywherethe propertied and professional classes and the bourgeoisie whogoverned in the name of the people. So too in any internationalcouncil or control it would be a few great empires that wouldgovern in the name of humanity.At the most, if it were otherwise, it could be only for ashort time, unless some new forces came into their own whichwould arrest or dissolve the tendency now dominant in the worldtowards large imperial aggregations. The position would then