XII

POLITICAL BASES OF A WORLD-STATE

World-state is a term likely to be offensive in its arrogance, if it be taken to mean the substitution of a single political community and government for the numerous separate national states which have hitherto existed. I therefore hasten to say that I intend no such meaning, but use the term as a convenient expression to cover any body of political arrangements, to which most of the principal nations of the world are parties, sufficiently stable in character and wide in scope to merit the title of international government.

Towards such a possibility the nineteenth century has made three great contributions. During that century great advances have been made in the settlement of political government upon a basis of nationality. This process has been accomplished partly by throwing off the dominion of some foreign power, as in the case of Belgium, Greece, Montenegro, Bulgaria, Rumania, and Serbia, and the South American colonies of Spain; partly by the closer federal union of independent states, as in the case of Germany and Switzerland; partly by a blend of the two methods as in the case of Italy; and partly by the peaceful dissolution of an unnatural union, as with Norway and Sweden. Though much still remains to be done before the identification of statehood with nationality even for Europe is completed, and some backward steps have been taken, the growing acceptance of the conception of nationality as a just and expedient basis of government is a powerful guarantee for the persistence of this joint work of liberation and of union. If, as the result of the settlement following this war, political readjustments are made which fairly satisfy the remaining aspirations after national autonomy, the more pacific atmosphere will favour all opportunities for co-operation between nations.

The second contribution of the nineteenth century towards political internationalism is of a more positive character. It consists in a series of inchoate and fragmentary but genuine attempts of the Great Powers to work together upon critical occasions in the interests of 'justice and order', as they understood those terms, and to embody in acts or conventions some policy which is the result of their deliberations. This flickering light, called the Concert of Europe, first kindled at the Congress of Vienna, has reappeared fitfully throughout the century. The treaties, declarations, and conventions, proceeding from these conferences or congresses of the Powers, have marked important advances, not only in the substance of international law, but in the method of legislation. For whereas, before the Congress of Vienna, all the treaties between states which helped to form the body of international law were the acts of two or, at the most, a small group of states, since that time law-making treaties of general application and of world-wide importance have come into being. The most noteworthy examples of these general treaties are the Final Act of the Vienna Congress in 1815, the Declaration of Paris in 1856, the Geneva Convention of 1864, the Treaty of Berlin in 1878, the General Act of the Congo Conference in 1885, and the two Hague Conferences of 1899 and 1907. Having regard to the general character of many of the rules laid down at these conferences, as, for instance, the abolition of the slave trade, the neutralization of certain lands and waters, and the regulation of the rules of war, it is clear that we have to recognize throughout last century the existence of a rudimentary organ of international legislation, very irregular in its operation, very imperfect in structure and authority, but none the less a genuine experiment in international government.

Hardly less significant for our purpose has been the prominent assertion of the principle of federalism in the formation or growth of national government. The great example of the United States has been followed by Switzerland and Germany, by Mexico, Argentine, Brazil, and Venezuela, and by the dominions of the British Empire in Canada, Australia, and South Africa. I must not in this brief survey even touch upon the different forms of federalism. It must suffice to remark that, whether as a a principle of devolution, as in the case of the proposal of Home Rule for the constituent parts of Great Britain, or as a principle of closer union, as in the proposal for a federated British Empire, federalism is very much alive. It furnishes a hopeful mode not only for reconciling demands for local autonomy with effective central sovereignty among the provinces or districts of a single national state, but even for harmonizing the claims of separate nationality with those of wider racial, linguistic, and traditional sympathy. But even more important than these distinctively political movements and events, as a pledge of the coming world-state, is the manifold structure of industrial and commercial internationalism which has been growing during the last few generations at an ever accelerating pace. The network of material, financial, and intellectual communications, connecting all parts of the developed world, and establishing quick, constant, cheap, and reliable modes of transport for men, goods, money, and information, form the actual basis of what may not improperly be called an economic world-state. Though much of this machinery, with the great work of international trade and capitalistic co-operation which it assists to perform, lies outside the sphere of politics, there are innumerable points of political contact and pressure. The realities of foreign policy in every state are more and more concerned with issues of trade, communications, and concessions, and the treaties and other formal arrangements between states are to a growing extent the instruments and the expressions of the internationalism of economic interests. The imperialism and the colonial policy of each great Power, though composed of various ingredients, are mainly directed by commerce and finance. Most of the disagreements and conflicts between governments relate to interferences with the free play of economic internationalism by states whose policy is still dominated by foolish and obsolescent rules of a narrowly national economy. An enlightened interpretation of the needs and interests of modern man demands that all such national economic barriers be removed and replaced by governmental co-operation to secure, by free trade and an open door, for capital and labour the fullest and best development and distribution of the economic resources of the world.

While, therefore, the most impressive political events of the nineteenth century have been the expression and the successful realization of nationalism, many powerful undercurrents of internationalism have been gathering force. The pressures of civilization have been more and more towards extra-national activities. Thoughtful men and women in our time recognize the urgent need of closer international communion for three related purposes: First, the consolidation, extension, and effective sanction of the existing body of international law; secondly, the establishment of peace on a basis of reliable methods for the just settlement of differences; thirdly, the provision of regular accepted means for the co-operation of nations in all sorts of positive constructive work for the human commonwealth.

These general considerations I will ask you to regard as introductory to the grave practical question which confronts us. Is this essential work of internationalism consistent with the preservation of the sovereignty and independence of the present national state, or does its performance involve some definite cession of these national state-rights to the requirements of an international government?

The terrible events which are passing to-day ripen and sharpen this issue. They bring into powerful relief the inherent defects of an international polity based upon the absolute independence of the several states, and the futile mechanical balances and readjustments by which foreign policy has been conducted hitherto. But how far do they offer assistance or security for the achievement of organic reform? After this war has come to a close, will the nations and governments be enabled to lay a sound basis for pacific settlement of disputes and for active co-operation in the common cause of humanity for the future? No confident answer to this question is possible. For nobody can predict the composition and the relative strength of the feelings and ideas which will constitute 'the state of mind' of the several nations and their statesmen. As regards immediate or early policy, much will, of course, depend upon the definiteness of the victory and defeat, and the consequent distribution and intensity of the passions of elation and depression, anger and revenge, which peace may leave behind. It is, of course, part of the fighting strength of every belligerent to persuade himself that an overwhelming victory for himself affords the best security of peace and progress in the future. But this conclusion, based on the prior assumption, equally liable to error, that one's own cause is entirely right and one's enemy's entirely wrong, is unlikely to be sound. A peace which brings the least intensity of triumph and humiliation, the most even distribution of gains and losses, would seem to give an atmosphere most favourable to the growth of pacific internationalism. This, of course, will be sharply contested, and those who contest it will exhibit the usual excessive confidence of those whose mind moves in a shut oven of heated but unmeaning phrases about fighting to a finish, crushing German militarism, and 'a war to end war'. But there is no stronger evidence of the intellectual and moral havoc of war than the easy acceptance of what Ruskin called 'masked words' in lieu of thinking.

"There are masked words abroad, I say, which nobody understands, but which everybody uses, and most people will also fight for, live for, or even die for, fancying they mean this or that or other of the things dear to them. There were never creatures of prey so mischievous, never diplomatists so cunning, never poisoners so deadly, as these masked words; they are the unjust stewards of all men's ideas; whatever fancy or favourite instinct a man most cherishes, he gives to his favourite masked word to take care of for him; the word at last comes to have an infinite power over him—you cannot get at him but by its ministry." In war-time this domination of 'masked words' is all-powerful, and is likely to leave the thinking powers of all Europe seriously impaired when the war is over.

There are those who hold that sheer exhaustion, nervous and economic, will compel the nations to seek concerted action against the recurrence of so shattering an experience, that some sheer instinct of self-preservation will find expression in adequate political arrangements. I should be the last to deny the reality of the collective instinct. But remember that, as an instinct, it works blindly, and is liable to be diverted and frustrated in a thousand ways by the conflicting streams of narrow passion amongst which it moves. Mere exhaustion and a general feeling of insecurity cannot yield a sufficient motive and directing force for the work of international construction. It is necessary to rationalize this instinct of self-preservation and co-operation, in order to make it of effective service. Here lies the heart of our difficulty. War is the most intensely derationalizing process, and the long steeping of European civilization in the boiling cauldron will have twisted and blunted the very instruments of thought. As Professor Murray points out in a powerful essay, war rapidly undoes the slow secular process by which liberty and capacity for individual thought have grown up, and plunges the personal judgement into the common trough of the herd-mind. It is, I take it, the recognition of this peril to the human mind, this necessity of safeguarding the powers of individual thought and personal responsibility, that brings us here. We seek to fortify the separate centres of personal judgement, to inform the individual mind, because the work of making a positive contribution to the unity of civilization depends upon the vigorous independent functioning of many minds.

This consideration brings me directly to confront the enemy, that is to say, those who contend that a world-state or any real international government is now and must always remain an impossibility, an unrealizable Utopian dream. The process of social evolution on its political side ends with the national state. It is a final product. National states cannot, will not, and ought not, to abate one jot or tittle of their inherent sovereignty and independence, and the experience of history shows that all attempts at international federation or union are pre-doomed to failure.

It is evidently quite impossible for me to present here a full formal refutation of these positions. I will therefore content myself with brief demurrers. To the argument from social evolution I would reply that evolution knows no finality of type, and that the presumption lies in favour of those who hold that the centripetal or co-operative powers, which have forged the national state out of the smaller social unities, are not exhausted, but are capable of carrying the organizing process further. To those who rely upon the authority of history, citing the collapse of the experiments in federation which followed the Congress of Vienna as proof that similar experiments will similarly fail to-day or to-morrow, I reply that this view is based on a false interpretation of the statement that 'history repeats itself'. A psychological or sociological experiment is not the same when fundamental changes have taken place in the psychical and social conditions. We have already recognized that the nineteenth century has seen a series of vital changes in the economic and spiritual structure of civilization. The evidence of 1815 cannot, therefore, be conclusive as regards the possibilities of 1915. To those who insist on the sovereignty and independence of the national state as an eternal verity, I will make no further reply than to say that such language has for me no more meaning than talk of 'the divine right of kings', 'the natural rights of man', or any other phrase of the abracadabra of metaphysical politics. The actual world in which we live knows no such absolutes. Sovereignty and independence, like all other legal claims, are subject to modification and compromise. Every bargain made by treaty or agreement with another state, every acceptance of international law or custom, involves some real diminution of sovereign independence, unless indeed the liberty to break all treaties and to violate all laws is expressly reserved as an inalienable right of nations. Moreover, within the limits of a single nation, sovereignty is itself divided and distributed. Alike in the United States of America, the Swiss Republic, and the German Empire, the constituent states as well as the nations are recognized as sovereign, possessing certain rights or powers safeguarded by the constitution against all encroachments of the central or federal government. So again within the state itself, the sovereignty is often no longer concentrated in a single person or a single body of persons, but is exercised by the joint action of several organs, as in Great Britain, where the king and the Houses of Parliament are the joint administrators of the sovereignty of the state. Sovereignty thus becomes more and more a question of degree and of adjustment. International lawyers will doubtless insist that neither treaties nor international laws involve any derogation of sovereign powers. But when the substantial liberties of action are curtailed by any binding agreement, the unimpaired sovereignty is an idle abstraction.

When, therefore, we ask whether it is not possible to extend and consolidate the agreements between so-called sovereign states into some form of effective international government, we broach a proposition less revolutionary in substance than in sound. If all the separate treaties, conventions, and other agreements, existing now between pairs of nations for the performance of specific acts and the settlement of differences, were modified and gathered into the forms of general treaties signed by all the treaty-making states; if all international laws and usages were codified and brought under the surveillance of some single representative court or council,—we should discover that there existed already the substance of an international government, not indeed adequate to our needs, but far ampler than we had suspected. In the Hague conventions and courts, again, and in certain other intergovernmental instruments, such as the Postal and Telegraphic Bureaux at Berne, we already possess the nucleus of the general forms required. We possess already the beginnings alike of the legislative, judicial, and administrative apparatus of international government. But it is slight in substance, fragmentary in its application, and exceedingly imperfect in its sanctions. Moreover, it has just shown itself quite inadequate to perform the first function of a government, viz. to keep the public peace.

The task of converting so feeble a structure of government into an effective instrument of international peace and progress is evidently one of great magnitude and difficulty. But it is the task which lies persistently before us, and upon its performance the safety of civilization itself depends. It is, therefore, well not to exaggerate its difficulties, but to measure them as closely as we can. This can best be done by means of a brief survey of the principal lines of advance which have been proposed. In this country, in America, in Holland, and elsewhere, the air is thickening with schemes for obtaining better international relations after the war. All of them have this, I think, in common, that they concern themselves primarily not with ideal or practical plans for the general co-operation of nations in advancing the welfare of the world, but with methods of preventing future wars and securing relief against the burden of armaments. All agree that some general formal arrangements between nations must be substituted for 'the clash of competing ambitions, of groupings and alliances and a precarious equipoise', and that only by such stable agreement can disarmament be got and peace rendered secure. All agree that the instrument of this international government must be a general treaty to which a number of states must be parties and that the terms of this treaty must require them to submit all forms of disputes to some pacific mode of settlement. Nearly all, moreover, accept the distinction drawn between justiciable issues, relating to the application or interpretation of laws or to the ascertainment of facts by means of legal evidence, which are suitable for settlement by a judicial or arbitral process, and those which, not being capable of such settlement, are better suited for a looser process of inquiry and conciliation.

But the proposals differ widely, both as regards the scope they assign to the work of preventing war, and as regards the measures they advocate for securing the fulfilment of international agreement. They may be grouped, I think, in three classes on an ascending scale of rigour. The first class envisages a general treaty, by which the signatory states shall undertake to submit all differences between them to processes of arbitration or conciliation conducted by impartial courts or commissions, and to abstain from all acts of hostility during the progress of such investigation. This principle has recently found an important expression in the treaties signed last year by the United States with Great Britain and France, and other nations. The first article of these treaties reads as follows: 'The High Contracting Parties agree that all disputes between them, of every nature whatsoever, other than disputes the settlement of which is provided for, and in fact achieved, under existing agreements between the High Contracting Parties, shall, when diplomatic methods of adjustment have failed, be referred for investigation and report to a Permanent International Commission to be constituted in the manner prescribed in the next succeeding article; and they agree not to declare war or begin hostilities during such investigation and before the report is submitted.' The objects of this method of pacific settlement are three: first, to provide impartial and responsible bodies for a reasonable inquiry into all disputes; secondly, to secure a 'cooling off' time for the heated feelings of the contestants; thirdly, to inform the public opinion of the world and to make effective its moral pressure for a sound pacific settlement.

The efficacy of any such arrangement evidently depends upon two conditions, first, the confidence of the signatory states that each and all will abide by their undertaking, and, secondly, the uncovenanted condition that they will accept and carry into effect the awards or recommendations of the arbitral and conciliation commissions. These proposals, however, furnish no sanctions or guarantees other than those of conscience and public opinion for the due performance of the treaty obligations, and make no attempt to bind the parties to an acceptance of the decision of the commissions. Moreover, regarded as a means of securing world-peace and disarmament, all such proposals appear defective in that they make no provision for disputes between one or more of the signatory states and outside states which are no parties to the arrangement.

Such considerations have moved many to seek to strengthen the bond of the alliance, and to make it available for mutual support against outside aggression. The vital issue here is one of sanctions or the use of joint force, diplomatic, economic, or military, to compel the fulfilment of treaty obligations and the execution of the awards. Many hold that, while most civilized states might be relied upon to carry out their undertakings, some powerful state—Germany, or Russia, or Japan—could not be trusted, and that this want of confidence would oblige all nations to maintain large armaments with all their attendant risks and burdens. To obviate this difficulty, it is proposed by some that the signatories shall pledge themselves to take joint action, diplomatic, economic, or forcible, against any of their members who, in defiance of the treaty obligations, makes or proposes an armed attack upon another member. This is the measure of stiffening added by Mr. Lowes Dickinson in his constructive pamphlet After the War: 'The Powers entering into the arrangement' are to 'pledge themselves to assist, if necessary, by their national forces, any member of the League who should be attacked before the dispute provoking the attack has been submitted to arbitration or conciliation.' A state, however, by Mr. Dickinson's scheme, is still to remain at liberty to refuse an award, and after the prescribed period, even to make war for the enforcement of its demands. Other peace-leaguers go somewhat further, assigning to the league an obligation to use economic or forcible pressure for securing the acceptance of the award of the Court of Arbitration, though leaving the acceptance of the recommendations of the Conciliation Court to the free option of the parties. This is the proposal made by Mr. Raymond Unwin, and by the League of Peace.

Now a definite halt at this position is intelligible and defensible. While binding by strict sanctions the States to submit all disputes to the pacific machinery that is provided, to await the conclusion of the arbitral and conciliatory processes, and even to accept the legal awards of arbitration, it leaves a complete formal freedom to refuse the recommendations of the Commission of Conciliation. Yet it must be borne in mind that most of the really dangerous disputes, involving likelihood of war, are not arbitrable in their nature, and will come before the Commission of Conciliation. If no provision is made for enforcing the acceptance of the recommendations of this body, what measure of real security for peace has been attained? An incendiary torch, like that kindled last year in the Balkans, may once again put Europe in flames. The defenders of the position we are now considering have three replies. They admit that their proposal still leaves open the possibility of war, but they contend that if a sufficient cooling-off time or 'moratorium' is secured, the likelihood of an ultimate recourse to war by rejection of the award will be reduced to a minimum. They urge that no scheme which can be devised will preclude the possibility of a strong criminal or reckless State violating its treaty obligations and seeking to enforce its will by force. Finally they urge that many self-respecting States would refuse to abandon the ultimate right of declaring war, in cases where they deemed their vital interests were affected, and that any invitation to take this step might wreck the possibility of a less complete but very valuable arrangement.

Now it would be a considerable advance towards world government, if all or most powerful States would consent to abandon separate alliances, or subordinate them to a general alliance binding them to submit all disputes to a process of impartial inquiry before attempting to enforce their national will by arms. It may be that this is as far as it is possible to go in the direction of securing world-peace and international co-operation in the early future. If States will not carry their co-operation so far as to agree upon united action to put down all wars between their members, and to take a united stand against all attacks from outside, it would be necessary to respect their scruples, and to rely upon the softening influence of the moratorium and informed public opinion to render a final recourse to arms unlikely among civilized States. But, in considering the measure of security thus achieved, we must remember that we must look to the weakest link in the chain of the alliance, and ask ourselves how far the plan of conciliation represented in the recent treaties between the United States and several friendly European nations can be considered equally secure in dealing with Germany, Russia, or Japan. If our international arrangement is to dispense with all forcible pressure in the last resort, and to rely upon purely moral pressure, it seems evident that the validity of the arrangement depends upon the degree of confidence which other States will entertain as to the bona fides and pacific disposition of the least scrupulous of the powerful signatory States. For if the opinion held of any one or two powerful States is that under the stimulus of greed or ambition they would be likely, in defiance of an award or of the public opinion of other States, to enforce their will upon some weaker neighbour, such an opinion will keep alive so strong a feeling of insecurity that no considerable reduction of military preparations will be possible.

In assessing the early value of all proposals for better international relations, the best practical test is afforded by the question, 'Will the proposal lead nations to reduce their armaments?' For it will be admitted that any settlement or international agreement, which leaves the claims of militarism and navalism upon the vital and financial resources of the several nations unimpaired, affords little hope of a pacific future. A return to the era of competing armaments will destroy the moral strength of any formal international agreements, however specious. The importance of this consideration has led many to insist that an explicit agreement for proportional disarmament should take a prominent place in any settlement. This proposal, however, seems to me defective in that it presumes in all or some of the nations a persistence of the motives which have hitherto led them to strengthen their fighting forces. Now the primary object of such international arrangements as we are discussing, is to bring about a state of things in which the past motives to arm will weaken and tend to disappear. If nations, actuated either by arrogance or greed or fear, continue to desire to increase their fighting strength, no arrangements for proportionate disarmament are likely to be effective. On the other hand, if the basis of a really valid league or federation can be laid, precluding the most ambitious State from any reasonable hope of indulging dreams of successful conquest, while relieving timid States from the apprehensions under which they have lived hitherto, the natural play of political forces within each State will favour disarmament. An international arrangement that meets our requirements must be strong enough to reverse the motives, aggressive and defensive, which in the past have caused nations to arm. Nations will not pile up armaments if they believe that they will have no need or opportunity to use them. To produce this belief in the uselessness of national armies and navies is therefore a prime object of international policy. The successful establishment of this belief involves, however, a change of disposition among national governments amounting to the process known in religious circles as conversion. They must be induced to forgo that right of war which according to past statecraft has been the brightest jewel in the crown of sovereignty.

Thus we are again brought round to our vital issue, that of the amount and kind of cession of sovereignty required for an effective International Government. It may be the case that it will be impossible to induce a sufficient number of the great States to transfer the ultimate right of waging war to a representative International Government, or to cede to such a Government the right to legislate on international relations with power to enforce obedience to these laws. There are, however, many of us who hold that these powers are essential to an international arrangement which shall effectively guarantee the peace of the world. The abandonment of the sovereign right to make war is essential for the future security of peace. Legislative and executive powers for an International Government are essential to obtain by pacific means those changes in the political and economic relations of peoples which hitherto have only been attainable by war. No merely statical settlement will suffice. Great new issues of national controversy or of economic needs will certainly come up afresh for settlement, and until some stable method of government is established with power to determine and enforce the equities and the utilities they represent, recourse to the arbitrament of war will still be likely.

But granting that national government does not represent a final form of political structure, and that some federal internationalism is now practicable, is it possible to hope or to expect that by a single stride, or by a series of rapid strides, the sovereignty of national states will submit to so much diminution as is involved in the more advanced scheme of international government? Most historians, statesmen, and political philosophers will, I think, hold that so large and rapid a process of development is impracticable, however desirable in theory it might be. It will be necessary, they insist, to take one step at a time, to preserve as closely as possible the principle of continuity, and not to attempt to move further and faster than circumstances and the necessities of the time compel.

But do circumstances and necessities always compel us to move slowly and to take one step at a time? Though normal growth is slow and continuous, modern science tends to lay increasing stress upon discontinuous and sudden larger variations in the production of organic changes. Biology distinguishes these mutations by which new species arise from the normal process of evolution by insensible gradations. There is, as I understand it, no real breach of continuity, no miraculous creation, but a sudden removal from a structural position which by slow accumulation of prior changes had become unstable, or to a new position of stability, involving a swift readjustment of organic parts. May not similarly important mutations occur in the evolution of political institutions, when a similar stress of circumstances makes itself felt? Nay, we may further ask, whether the special function of man's reasonable will is not to bring about these changes in the direction of individual and collective conduct. The power of making new quick and complex adaptations to new environments is the essential economy of the human brain. Freedom of thought and of will are continually producing new judgements and new determinations for action which contain this quality of sudden mutation. Quick conversions of thought and will are of the essence of our conscious life. When they carry important consequences to our conduct they appear to be, and in fact are, breaches of the normal conduct of our life which proceeds by custom, repetition, and insensible modifications.

In politics, as in religion, sudden conversions under the stress of circumstances are not unknown, and they may be genuine and lasting. And what holds of individual wills and judgements holds also of the collective mind. That human nature in its fundaments of thought and feeling, its primary needs, desires and emotions, will not be appreciably changed even by this shattering experience of war must be conceded. But what we may call the general state of mind, or the moral and intellectual atmosphere, will be profoundly affected. This will be in part the result of the great economic and political disturbances which are occurring, and which will have undermined and loosened the old ideas and valuations in relation to such important institutions as property, the control of industry, the activities of woman, the party system, the State itself. But more profound still will be the direct reaction of sorrow and suffering of war, the revelation of the power of the organized destructiveness and cruelty, and of the inadequacy of reason, justice, and goodwill as defences of civilization. The very foundations of organized religion in the hearts of men will be shaken. The patent failure of the State to perform its primary function of safeguarding life and property is likely to feed currents of revolutionism in every country. The sudden changes produced in the balance of age and of sex by the destruction of so large a proportion of the young and energetic men of every nation, will affect all processes of thought and policy. Some of these changes will seem favourable to conservatism, timidity, and reaction. Everywhere, at the close of the war, military and official autocracy will be enthroned in the seats of power, and the spirit of political authority will be stoking the fires of fevered nationalism which war evokes. But other forces will be making for bold political experiments. Not only the fear of restive and impoverished workmen, who have recently acquired the use of arms and perhaps the taste for risks, but the havoc wrought upon industry and commerce, and above all the crushing burden of taxation, will dispose the controlling and possessing classes to seek alternatives to a return to the era of competing alliances and armaments. Mild and conservative measures will be obviously unavailing. During the years of exhaustion following the war, resolute leaders of public opinion will be setting themselves everywhere to frame schemes of international relations which shall yield adequate guarantees of peace. For the first time in history great reading and thinking communities will give their chief attention to international politics. They will recognize the urgency of the work of building the society of nations upon a basis of genuinely representative government. Behind this reasonable process of constructive thinking, carried on in every country by politically convinced individuals and groups, will be the powerful support of the unthinking, suffering masses, motived by no clear conception of causes or remedies, but by that collective instinct of self-preservation which impels the herd to avoid destruction and to follow leaders who point the way to safety.

BOOKS FOR REFERENCE

The International Crisis in its Ethical and Psychological Aspects. Humphrey Milford.

G. Lowes Dickinson, After the War. Fifield.

C.E. Hooper, The Wider Outlook beyond the World-War. Watts & Co.

F.N. Keen, The World in Alliance. Southwood.

Norman Angell, Prussianism and its Destruction. Heinemann.

Allison Phillips, The Confederation of Europe. Longmans.

The New Statesman. Special Supplement. Suggestions for the Prevention of War.

J.A. Hobson, Towards International Government. Allen & Unwin.