i THE TREATY OF PEACE 27

By the proposed Free Trade Union somepart of the loss of organisation and economicefficiency may be retrieved, which must other-wise result from the innumerable new politicalfrontiers now created between greedy, jealous,immature, and economically incomplete, nation-alist States. Economic frontiers were tolerableso long as an immense territory was included ina few great Empires; but they will not be toler-able when the Empires of Germany, Austria-Hungary, Russia, and Turkey have been par-titioned between some twenty independentauthorities. A Free Trade Union, comprisingthe whole of Central, Eastern, and South-Eastern Europe, Siberia, Turkey , and (I shouldhope) the United Kingdom, Egypt , and India,might do as much for the peace and prosperityof the world as the League of Nations itself.Belgium, Holland, Scandinavia, and Switzer-land might be expected to adhere to it shortly.And it would be greatly to be desired by theirfriends that France and Italy also should seetheir way to adhesion.

It would be objected, I suppose, by somecritics that such an arrangement might gosome way in effect towards realising theformer German dream of Mittel-Europa . Ifother countries were so foolish as to remainoutside the Union and to leave to Germany all its advantages, there might be some truthin this. But an economic system, to whichevery one had the opportunity of belongingand which gave special privilege to none, is