They assuredly can not except by force; and this is the precise point on which the continued hostilities in Europe turn today.

In diplomatic parable the German Imperial spokesmen say that they can accept (or as they prefer to phrase it, grant) no terms that do not fully safeguard the Future of the Fatherland; and in similarly diplomatic parable the spokesmen of the Entente insist that Prussian militarism must be permanently put out of commission; but it all means the same thing, viz.

that the Imperial establishment is to be (or is not to be) disabled beyond the possibility of its entering on a similar warlike enterprise again, when it has had time for recuperation.
The dynastic statesmen, and the lay subjects of the Imperial establishment, are strenuously set on securing a fair opportunity for recuperation and a wiser endeavour to achieve that dominion which the present adventure promises to defeat; while the Entente want no recurrence, and are persuaded that a recurrence can be avoided only on the footing of a present collapse of the Imperial power and a scrupulously enforced prostration of it henceforth.
Without the definitive collapse of the Imperial power no pacific league of nations can come to anything much more than armistice.

On the basis of such a collapse the league may as well administer its affairs economically by way of an all-around reduction of armaments, as by the costlier and more irksome way of "preparedness." But a sensible reduction of armaments on the part of the neutral nations implies disarmament of the dynastic States.

Which would involve a neutral surveillance of the affairs of these dynastic States in such detail and with such exercise of authority as would reduce their governments to the effective status of local administrative officials.