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Show GREAT POWER I0EA CANNOT BE TOLERATED LONDON, Ocl. 31. (Correspondence (Correspond-ence of the Associated Press.) "The Great Power Idea" as represented by foreign olllcos, must be done away with If the proposed league of natlonB Is to be a success. H. G. Wells, the novelist and publicist, told a large aud-ienco aud-ienco at tho American officers club. A loaguo of nations, he said, was in accord with human nature and the spirit of nationality, and it was not opposed even to what Americans would call the "Icing business." Bui the Great Power idea would have to be exercised if mankind was not to go down in bloodshed and ruin. The great power idea, he explained, was that each state was in conflict with all other states, and it absolutely absolute-ly opposed the idea if the common welfare of man. "It was only a little more active in Berlin," he asserted, "that in the other capitals of Europe. Every foreign office, of-fice, war office and admiralty has boon organized to carry out the great power dreams. "Foreign ofllccs are too secretive and advantage -seeking instruments and too antiquated for the difficult task of dealing fairly with all other nations under a league of nations. "The United States is in a different position. It is a republic, with a president presi-dent capable of speaking plainly to the peoples of the earth In n manner which is enough to produce an epidemic of epilepsy in European foreign offices." A league of nations would have to substitute, he snid, some sort of central cen-tral control In which diplomacy would have to be pooled and represent the wholo of mankind. If this was left to tho present foreign offices to arrange,! ho contended, it would be asking them' to arrange for their own extinction. "I have always been an advocate," ho added, "of complete victory. But something more than Germany is the matter witn liurope at tho present time. Unless the great power system embodied in present-day foreign offices, of-fices, pursuing secret policies, is destroyed, de-stroyed, this war will not have been worth while. nn |