It may, indeed, prove that they are more than sufficiently patriotic for the purposes of a neutral peace.

They stand for peace, but it is "peace with honour;" which means, in more explicit terms, peace with undiminished national prestige.

Now, national prestige is a very particular commodity, as has been set out in earlier passages of this inquiry; and a peace which is to be kept only on terms of a jealous maintenance of the national honour is likely to be in a somewhat precarious case.

If, and when, the national honour is felt to require an enhanced national ascendancy, the case for a neutral peace immediately becomes critical.

And the greater the number and diversity of pretensions and interests that are conceived to be bound up with the national honour, the more unstable will the resulting situation necessarily be.
The upshot of all this recital of considerations appears to be that a neutral peace compact may, or it may not, be practicable in the absence of such dynastic States as Germany and Japan; whereas it has no chance in the presence of these enterprising national establishments.
No one will be readier or more voluble in exclaiming against the falsity of such a discrimination as is here attempted, between the democratic and the dynastic nations of the modern world, than the spokesmen of these dynastic Powers.