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A League of Nations 651in a quarrel on his beaten opponent and not by an impartialjudge is apt rightly or wrongly to be suspect to the mere humanreason and at best much of what is called justice is only legalisedrevenge, — but still it may be that nothing but justice or evenless than justice has been done. But that makes no differenceto the fact that a number of new democracies, vigorous andintellectual peoples, born to a new life which should have beenone of hope and good will to the coming order, will be thereinevitably as a source of revolt and disorder, eager to support anychange which will remove their burdens, gratify their resentmentand heal their festering wounds. They may be held down, keptweak and maimed, even though one of them is laborious, skilful,organised Germany, but that will mean a weakness and an illbalancein the new order itself, and if they recover strength, itwill not be to acquiesce in their inferior place and the perpetualtriumph and greatness of their ancient rivals. Only in a legalisedsystem of equal democracies can there be some true chance ofthe cessation of these jealousies, enmities, recurrent struggles.Otherwise war will break out again or in some other form theold battle continue. An unequal balance can never be a securityfor a steady and peaceful world-system.Pass, if this were the only peril of the newly inauguratedsystem. But this league seems also to stand for a perpetuationofanewstatus quo to be arrived at by the peace which is beingmade its foundation. The great powers, it would seem, havearrived at a compact to secure their dominions and holdingsagainst any future menace of diminution. This arrangement isof the nature at once of a balance of power — but with all thedangers of an unequal balance — and of an attempt to perpetuatefor ever certain at present preponderating influences andestablished greatnesses. That attempt is against all the teachingof history and all the perennial movement of Nature; the leaguewhich stands committed to it is committed to a jealously guardedinsecurity and the preservation of an unstable equilibrium. It isnot certain that the constructing powers will themselves remainconsistently satisfied with the terms of their compact or ableto resist that urge of national and of human destiny which is