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Bookplate inserted; slip of paper affixed to front endpaper typed: “Presented to Rt Hon. R.G. Menzies, P.C., K.C., M.H.R. by the Liberals of Kooyong – 31/5/48.”; some underlining in pencil in chapter titled “The Structure of Empire”, in particular: [p. 486] “That the League of Nations, which so many enthusiasts hailed as the political salvation of mankind, should have perished almost unnoticed after a precarious existence of twenty years, while the three-centuries-old Empire which it seemed about to supercede lived on to save the world from yet another tyranny – this would indeed have seemed strange and disheartening paradox to the idealists of 1919. Yet the fate of the League was assured from the moment of birth. For although it set out to do for the whole of mankind what the British Empire was already doing for a quarter of it, its founders ignored every lesson which they might have learned from British experience. The Empire had grown, the League was manufactured.”; [p. 487, also earmarked] “For the British knew next to nothing of their imperial history, and what they had lately learnt of the Empire in the hard school of war they soon allowed themselves to forget. This indeed was one of the few indisputable achievements of the League, that in Britain for the generation between the two German onslaughts it overshadowed and outmoded the Empire, and engrossed much of the energy and idealism which, had it been devoted to imperial opportunities, might have gone far to ensure the peace of the world.”; [p. 488] “The League moreover did not only seem to dispense the Empire from the necessity of defending itself or of pursuing a foreign policy of its own […] There could be no conflict of loyalties for the autonomous members of the Commonwealth so long as all remained loyal members of the League.”; [p. 489] “The British Empire stood forth once again as the only system of collective security in existence, and since it lacked the comprehensive written constitution which had simplified, and destroyed, the League, its members found themsleves taking anxious stock of their mutual relations.”; [p. 490] “”The present system” the Round Table pointed out [/] leave on Great Britain the responsibility of conducting the foreign policy of a Commonwealth which contains a quarter of the people of the globe, and of maintaining, at its own cost, the diplomatic service and the Army and Navy needed for the purpose, and that without knowing whether its policy is approved and its acts will be supported by the people for whom it is supposed to speak.”