destined victims

to build obviously strategic railways to the very boundary of Belgium, for example. There was nothing in the world which had the authority to challenge her. But the primary purpose of any efficient league of nations will be to nip militarist preparation in the bud. Instead of killing dragons, its simpler task will be to boil their eggs. There may be many struggles and crises under a world-league of nations, but the assumption that they will be on anything like the scale of the Great War is beyond the limits of possibility.

Upon this point we cannot be too clear; it is not nationality that is threatened by the League of Nations, it is this 'power' obsession, this product of the competitive European courts of the eighteenth century, which used national feeling in an entirely Machiavellian spirit. And this power idea carries with it much more mischief than the threat of sudden war and the attendant necessities of armament. It is about the nuclei of the European power systems that the current conceptions of economic warfare and territorial exploitation have grown. It is to them that we owe the conception of peace as a phase of military preparation during which there is a systematic attempt to put rivals at an economic disadvantage. And it will be clear that an abandonment of the idea of the world as a conflict of powers involves, not merely the abandonment of ideas essentially militarist, but also the abandonment of the idea of the world as a conflict of economic systems.

As we penetrate these common prepossessions of an age which is now drawing to a close, the positive as compared with the negative side of the project of a league of nations opens out. Behind the primarily negative project of 'no war upon earth,' appears as a necessary corollary a new economic phase in history, in which there will be a collective regard for the common weal of mankind. The examination and elaboration of the possibilities of economic world-control, already immensely foreshadowed by the gigantic 'poolings' that have been forced upon the

powers allied against Germany, is one of the most rapidly expanding chapters in the study of the project.

This power prepossession is held by many writers to be the primary and central antagonist of the project. 'The Great Power idea,' they say, 'that is the enemy.' They point out — and the instances we have quoted enforce the contention — that most of our statesmen, a large part of our historical and political literature, and the general mind, are so saturated with power ideas, as to be totally unable to imagine the League of Nations as anything but a league of powers, still with a strong undertow of Machiavellian interpretation. And this school of opinion urges a strenuous attack upon this power idea which still rules the intellectual world of Europe, as the main task of a leagueof-nations propaganda.

VII

Another considerable body of criticism hostile to the project of a league of nations is grouped about certain moral facts. Before concluding these introductory remarks, it is advisable to discuss this, not merely in order to answer so much of it as amounts to an argument against the world-league project, but also because it opens out before us the real scope of the league-of-nations project. There seems to be a disposition in certain quarters to underestimate the scale upon which such a project can be planned. It is dealt with as if it were a little legal scheme detached from the main body of human life. It seems to be assumed that some little group of 'jurists,' sitting together in a permanent conference at The Hague or in New York, will be able to divert the whole process of humanity into new channels, to overcome the massive, multitudinous, and tremendous forces that make for armed conflict and warfare among men, and to inaugurate à new era of peace throughout the world.

The change we contemplate here is not to be so easily achieved. It is a project of world-politics, and there is no modest way of

treating such a project. It would be better left alone than treated timidly. It is a change in which nations and political and educational systems are the counters, and about which we must think, if we are to think effectively, in terms of the wealth of nations and millions of men. It is a proposal to change the life and mentality of everyone on earth.

Now, the thought of those who direct their attention to the moral probabilities of a world-peace turns largely upon the idea of 'loyalty.' They apprehend man as a creature of intense, essential egotism, who has to be taught and trained very painfully and laboriously to unselfishness, and the substitution of great and noble ends for base and narrow ones. They argue that he was in his origins a not very social creature who has been forced by his own inventions into a larger circle of intercourse. He had learned his first unselfishness from his mother in the family group; he had been tamed into devotion by the tribe and his tribal religion; the greater dangers of a solitary life had enforced these subjugations upon him. But he still relapses very readily into base self-seeking. His loyalty to his nation may easily become a mere extension of his personal vanity; his religious faith a cloak for hatred of, and base behavior toward, unbelievers. In times of peace and security, the great forms in which he lives do so tend to degenerate. And the great justification of war from this point of view is that it creates a phase of national life in which a certain community of sacrifice to a common end, a certain common faithfulness and helpfulness, are exacted as a matter of course from every citizen. Many are called upon to die, and all are called upon to give help and suffer privations. War gives reality to loyalty. It is the fire that makes fine the clay of solidarity. The war-phase has been hitherto a binding and confirming phase in the life of communities, while peace has been a releasing and relaxing phase. And if we are to contemplate a state of the world in which there is to be no warfare, we must be prepared also, these critics argue, for a process of moral disintegration.

A well-known passage in The Crown of Wild Olive may be quoted in this connection. It occurs in a lecture which Ruskin delivered to Woolwich cadets, and runs as follows:

...

When I tell you that war is the foundation of all the Arts, I mean also that it is the foundation of all the high virtues and faculties of men. The common notion that peace and the virtues of civilised life flourished together I found to be wholly untenable. Peace and the vices of civilised life only flourish together. We talk of peace and learning, and of peace and plenty, and of peace and civilisation; but I found that those were not the words which the muse of history coupled together; that on her lips the words were peace, and sensuality -peace, and selfishness peace, and death. I found, in brief, that all great nations learned their truth of word, and strength of thought, in that they were nourished in war and wasted in peace; taught by war and deceived by peace; trained by war and betrayed by peace; in a word, that they were born in war and expired in peace.

war;

The late Professor William James found enough validity in this line of thought to discuss it very seriously. In his essay on "The Moral Equivalent of War' he deals very illuminatingly with this question. He agrees that to relieve the consciousness of ordinary men from the probability of war, without substituting any other incentive to devotion, may be a very grave social loss. His own suggestion for giving every citizen a sense of obligation and ownership in the commonwealth, for weaving the ideas of loyalty and service, that is, into every life, is to substitute the collective war of mankind against ignorance, confusion, and natural hardships, for the war between man and man; to teach this, not only theoretically, but by the very practical expedient of insisting upon a period of compulsory state service for every citizen, male or female. He proposes to solve at the same time this moral problem and an equally grave social problem, by making the unskilled or semi-skilled part of the labor in the (nationalized) mines, in the (nationalized) fisheries, in hospitals, many

1 Memories and Studies (Longmans, Green & Co., London, 1911), Chapter XI. "The Moral Equivalent of War' was written for and first published by the Association for International Conciliation.

types of factory, and so forth, a public service. Personal freedom, he insists, has invariably been bought, and must always be bought, by responsible participation in the toils and cares of that system of law and service which constitutes the framework of human liberty.

It would be idle to deny the substantial truth in this type of criticism of peace. But it applies only to that crude conception of peace which makes it a negative thing, a mere cessation of war, a state in which you can go where you will and not be shot at. We must realize clearly that such negative peace is not our permanent aim. It is something, of course, to have a rest from suffering and the infliction of suffering; but it is a greater thing to be set free, and peace sets people free. It sets them free to live, to think, to work at the work that is best worth doing, to build instead of destroying, to devote themselves to the pursuit or the creation of the things that seem highest, instead of having to spend all their time in trying to avoid being killed. Peace is an empty cup which we can fill as we please; it is an opportunity which we can seize or neglect. To recognize this is to sweep out of one's mind all dreams of a world-peace contrived by a few jurists and influential people in some odd corner of the world's administrative bureaus. As well might the Three Tailors of Tooley Street declare the millennium in being. Permanent world-peace must necessarily be a great process and state of affairs, greater, indeed, than any war-process, because it must anticipate, comprehend, and prevent any war-process, and demand the understanding, the willing and conscious participation, of the great majority of human beings. We, who look to it as a possible thing, are bound not to blind ourselves to, or conceal from others, the gigantic and laborious system of labors, the immense tangle of coöperations, which its establishment involves. If political institutions or social methods stand in the way of this great good for mankind, it is fatuous to dream of compromises with them. A world-peace organization cannot evade universal relationships.