So that in the workday apprehension of the common man, not given to analytic excursions, any infraction of the national integrity or any abatement of the national prestige has come to figure as an insufferable infringement on his personal liberty and on those principles of humanity that make up the categorical articles of the secular creed of Christendom.

The fact may be patent on reflection that the common man's substantial interest in the national integrity is slight and elusive, and that in sober common sense the national prestige has something less than a neutral value to him; but this state of the substantially pertinent facts is not greatly of the essence of the case, since his preconceptions in these premises do not run to that effect, and since they are of too hard and fast a texture to suffer any serious abatement within such a space of time as can come in question here and now.
* * * * * The outlook for a speedy settlement of the world's peace on a plan of unconditional surrender to the projected Imperial dominion seems unpromisingly dubious, in view of the stubborn temper shown by these modern peoples wherever their preconceived ideas of right and honest living appear to be in jeopardy; and the expediency of entering into any negotiated compact of diplomatic engagements and assurances designed to serve as groundwork to an eventual enterprise of that kind must therefore also be questionable in a high degree.

It is even doubtful if any allowance of time can be counted on to bring these modern peoples to a more reasonable, more worldly-wise, frame of mind; so that they would come to see their interest in such an arrangement, or would divest themselves of their present stubborn and perhaps fantastic prejudice against an autocratic regime of the kind spoken for.

At least for the present any such hope of a peaceable settlement seems illusive.

What may be practicable in this way in the course of time is of course still more obscure; but argument on the premises which the present affords does not point to a substantially different outcome in the calculable future.
For the immediate future--say, within the life-time of the oncoming generation--the spiritual state of the peoples concerned in this international quandary is not likely to undergo so radical a change as to seriously invalidate an argument that proceeds on the present lie of the land in this respect.