a spiritual being and from the equal endowment of each man by his Creator with the attributes of life, the will to live, and the desire for happiness, which are common to all; so that these fundamental and universal rights exist antecedent to and independent of every government, however great and powerful. This fundamental and necessary limitation upon the power of all governments requires recognition by all governments through a written constitution; and since all the subordinate rights of individuals established by governments must be derived from and consistent with these fundamental rights, written constitutions are also necessary in order to enable the people governed so to frame their government and so to limit and safeguard it, by general declarations, by specifications of powers, and by prohibitions, that it will certainly respect and secure the fundamental principles which underlie all human society and the fundamental rights of individuals and nations based on these fundamental principles.

Therefore it would be necessary that the written constitution of the society of nations establishing the international directorate should contain a declaration of the universal and fundamental principles of all human action and relationship such as is contained in the first sentence of the second paragraph of the preamble of the Declaration of Independence; a declaration of the fundamental rights and duties of nations, such as that which has been adopted by the American Peace Society and the American Institute of International Law; a declaration of the objects of the constitution, modeled upon the preamble of the Constitution of the United States; and also, if possible after the provisions instituting the different parts of the general international directorate, defining their composition and the relations of one to the other, and determining the sphere of

jurisdiction of the whole directorate and each of its parts by a specification of powers-a bill of rights democratizing and republicanizing the relations between the government of each nation and the people of the nation by establishing prohibitions, absolute or conditional, upon certain forms of governmental action found by experience to be injurious or destructive to liberty.

The institution of such an international directorate as has been above proposed would not disturb any of the existing agencies or processes by which international activities and relations are now directed. The nations would retain their ministries of foreign affairs, their ministries in charge of dependencies, their diplomatic and consular officers and their courts functioning in international cases. The judicial tribunals and the administrative arrangements ancillary to them, established by the Hague Conferences, would be unchanged. Upon the present international mechanism the international directorate would be superposed as a means of bringing all the existing agencies and processes into cooperation and harmony.

The international directorate proposed would be but an application on a universal scale of the system which nearly all nations having dependencies have found necessary in the management of their colonial empires. The Privy Council and the Council for India in Great Britain, and the colonial councils of the European nations, which, under the ministries for the colonies and dependencies, manage the colonial empires of these respective nations, are in principle interstate directorates, holding together widely separated countries, diverse in race, climate, and civilization, by methods which are essentially conciliative. Though these interstate directorates are backed by the physical force of the nation,

physical force has been found to be inapplicable in holding dependencies to nations except when used sparingly and scientifically in aid of conciliation, and in many cases to be wholly inapplicable. The superintending directorate in colonial empires is in process of evolution, and in one or more of them will doubtless soon be a fact. The problem of holding together the widely separated nations of the world, diverse in race, climate, and civilization, is clearly analogous to the problem of managing colonial empires. The only difference is, that the international directorate must be a delegated body, instituted by all the nations, which shall be of and for them all, and shall carry the principles of democracy and republicanism into international relations. (Cf. "The Administration of Dependencies," by the author of this article, pp. 527-530, 578604, as respects the management of colonial empires by directive councils and superintending directive bodies, and the applicability of the directorate form of government in political aggregations where the federal-state form is inapplicable.)

The plan proposed would, of course, not be a panacea for all international ills. Each nation would continue to be free and independent. It would reject or accept the counsel of the international directorate according as it thought its self-interest demanded. Secret treaties and other forms of intrigue, and excessive national armaments to support the intrigues, would doubtless continue to go on. Domination of the seas, of the international trade routes, and of the backward countries by individual nations or by a league or leagues of nations, would no doubt continue to be attempted. Invisible international government, in democracies and monarchies, would undoubtedly continue to be the dream of political, financial, and trading syndicates, and to have

a more or less stable de facto existence. Attempts would probably be made to pervert the international directorate to selfish national ends. Therefore war would continue to be possible. But a means would have been provided for the gradual abolition of all these abnormal processes and agencies and for the limitation, by the free act of the separate nations, of the excessive national armaments which make these abnormal processes and agencies possible. Excessive national armaments will be limited by the voluntary act of each nation when it ceases to be for the self-interest of each nation to maintain an excessive armament. When an international organization, by its successful operation, has made some part of a nation's armament unnecessary and therefore excessive, the nation will, as a matter of common sense and economic necessity, scrap the part which is excessive, and release the capital and labor for productive employment. Limitation of national armament in any other manner is, it would seem impossible. In this manner it may be possible.

That some such international conciliative directorate as has been suggested, exercising legislative and administrative as well as judicial direction of the nations as respects international matters, must sooner or later be established, would seem to be beyond doubt. Destructive inventions have made the strong nations and the weak nations almost equally strong and equally defenseless. Constructive inventions have enabled all men and nations to share equally in the common necessities of life and in the common knowledge. All the races of men are rapidly becoming equal in physique and intelligence, and equally cognizant of their fundamental rights.

The proper time to begin the institution of the new system would seem to be the present moment. The

questions of national existence and boundaries which are now the obstacles to peace, are almost entirely questions incidental to the rival ambitions of great powers. As things now are, small nations occupying strategic positions on international trade routes cannot be allowed independent existence within boundaries determined by the principles of nationality and equality of national right and opportunity. These small nations must, under the present system, be given such boundaries and allowed such privileges as are consistent with the political and economic policies of the nation or group of nations which for the moment holds the balance of power and dominates the particular international trade routes on which these small nations are situated. So long as there is no international direction to modify and gradually to supplant the present system of the balance of power, that system will remain, involving all the great powers in the struggle for world power, and leaving the small and strategically important nations in a condition of perpetual uncertainty as respects their boundaries, their privileges, and even their national existence. A conclusion of the war which should determine, according to the exigencies of the balance of power, the relations of the great powers to each other and the privileges and boundaries of smaller nations, would greatly complicate the future. Such a peace, as laying the foundation for a greater war in the future, might prove a worse calamity than the war itself. The most certain assurance against a peace of this kind would seem to be a unanimous agreement between the great powers, entered into during the war, accepting the principle of an international conciliative direction after the war.

Once such an agreement were signed, it would be possible for the great powers, in the treaty of peace,