We must be free to reduce those forces or to refrain from employing them in making war.

An engagement which might in circumstances, the real character of which no one can foresee at present, compel us to undertake a war at the bidding of others is a thing to which we ought never to consent.

Engagements to make war are not a safe way of promoting peace.

They may possibly be justified where there is some clearly specified object, some defined case in which nations ally themselves to prevent some particular wrong, such, for example, as guaranteeing the neutrality of Belgium.

Even for a single specific agreement of this kind a very strong case is required, but that is a totally different thing from agreeing to provide a kind of world police to enforce and execute the orders of a Council of heterogeneous States under conditions the nature of which no one can predict now.