gardless of the rest? Is it to be permitted, when both parties to the dispute violate their obligations as members of the League and engage in war, that the others may be neutral, or must the non-disputants fight both the disputants? Would any member of the League which felt that both belligerents had violated its provisions be able to claim any right or perform any duties as a neutral, if other nations of the League held that only one of the belligerents had violated the constitution of the League?

The proposal that the members of the League shall use joint economic and military force recognizes and legalizes the use of military force to bring into operation the destructive economic forces of cold and hunger. Economic force used to compel submission, if morally justifiable at all, can only be justified when used as humanely as possible by a skillful legislature and executive of a responsible organized society. In times of peace economic force may be so directed as to affect classes of people to the benefit of all. In times of war, however, it can only be used to compel submission, and inevitably injures both combatants and non-combatants. Economic force used in war, or as a substitute for military force in compelling submission, destroys alike infants, children, women, the sick, the aged, as well as the men of fighting age and ability. The horrors of its use far surpass the horrors of war between armed men. The use of economic force to compel submissionwhether by encirclement and siege on land, by blockade of commercial ports, by destroying unarmed ships of commerce, by general embargo, by general prohibitive tariff, or by prohibitive regulations designed to effect a boycott-recoils upon those who use it. Not only does such use of economic force generally involve the nation using it in economic loss, but, since it involves

the destruction of the weak, the innocent, and the helpless, it decivilizes the people of the nation using it and sets back civilization generally.

The league, therefore, in order not to be an entangling alliance, and in order not to extend the inhumane and decivilizing use of economic force, must have a permanent legislature and an executive. But if these are added, the plan becomes one for establishing a federal state out of widely separated nations. The failure of the Imperial Federation movement in the British Empire shows that a federal state composed of noncontiguous states or nations is an impossibility.

The proposed constitution of the league makes no reference to the greater part of the internal relationships of the league and none at all to its external relationships. That such a league would arouse suspicion and jealousy on the part of the omitted nations goes without saying. The league, in order to have an opportunity to be internally peaceful, would have to be so completely dominant over all nations outside it that those nations, either separately or in alliance, would never dare to attack it or any member of it. A dominant league would soon bring under its control all the weak and backward nations outside it, and the world would find itself in the hands of an oligarchy of widely separated nations; an oligarchy which would itself ultimately be ruled by the nation or nations controlling the sea.

The proposed constitution of the league, whether it provides for a weak league, a strong league, or a dominating league, is inconsistent with the whole conception of the society of nations and of the law of nations recognized, formulated, and applied by that society, which has been slowly built up by the thought and effort of the world. A league of separated nations

differs in nature from a league of contiguous nations. A league of separated nations must, in order to live, be dominant at sea, and probably also on the land and in the air. A league of contiguous nations forms a district in the whole organization of the earth's surface, and its local self-government is consistent with the local self-government of other district leagues. If the world were divided among several great district leagues or unions, they would tend to establish a supernational authority over all. A league of separated nations, on the other hand, would tend to be the supernational authority. If there were several such leagues, they would tend to fight until one of them became the supernational authority.

Finally, the plan exposes all nations to new and real dangers. It is said by the promoters of the plan that the league is not dangerous to its members or to the nations outside of it, because the members will never be called upon to perform their obligation to go to war, since the mere existence of the league, and the fear of joint action, will keep the peace. The hard experience of many men and women who have entered into dangerous obligations on representations made to them by persons they have trusted, that they would never be required to fulfill their obligations, proves the fallaciousness of this plea.

We conclude, therefore, that the proposed constitution of the League to Enforce Peace is objectionable:

Because it seeks to use the processes and organs which are suitable only for the voluntary and cooperative form of organization and to make them compulsive; Because it proposes compulsion of great nations by a number of great nations, which is either an impossibility or a plan for universalizing war;

Because it either proposes to submit to possible de

struction nations adjudged by the League to have violated its constitution and thereby ultimately to establish a world-monopoly, or to compel submission to conciliation, which is impossible in the nature of things;

Because it lacks a permanent legislature and an executive, and thereby provides for an entangling alliance and an indefinite and disorderly extension of economic force, which, however applied, is essentially inhuman, since it operates upon non-combatants as well as combatants;

Because, if a permanent legislature and an executive be added, the plan becomes one for the establishment of a federal state composed of widely separated nations, which experience shows to be impossible;

Because the League must either be weak and subject to external attack, or dominant over all outside nations; Because the League, being composed of scattered nations, whether it be weak and precarious, or strong and dominant, is inconsistent with the whole conception of the society of nations and the law of nations, and tends to the destruction of international order and law;

Because the League is not, as its advocates would have us believe, a means of producing universal peace without danger to its members, but, if carried into effect, would be a political union of an imperfect and defective kind, involving its members in complicated and highly onerous relationships, and imposing upon each obligations, which it must fulfill at the risk of its destruction by the others.

Are we then driven to the conclusion that there is no hope for a more economical, efficient, and therefore, peaceful, organization of the society of nations except by organizing that society into a federal state, which is clearly beyond the range of practical politics? I believe The possibilities of voluntary and cooperative

not.

organization have not yet been exhausted. In the industrial world as at present organized, enormous groups and societies and corporations carry on their operations and settle their disputes and strikes by wholly voluntary and conciliative methods. The success attained in this field should stimulate those who are interested in political organization on a vast scale to explore the possibilities of this new science of cooperative organization. The great industrial groups and societies of the modern industrial world resemble nations in that no compulsion of them by the state is possible, because their power rivals that of the state itself. But experience seems to have shown that not only is compulsion of those vast societies impossible, but that it is also unnecessary, since the increasing reasonableness of democratically organized societies, under modern conditions of universal education, makes conciliation increasingly possible. It may well be that the voluntary processes and organs which have been found suitable for holding in cooperative union the great industrial groups and societies may prove to be more effective for holding the nations together in peace than the compulsive processes and organs which we use in our federal states.

Moreover the nations of the world are now actually organized as a voluntary and cooperative union under the Convention for the Pacific Settlement of International Disputes. That Convention, as adopted by the First Hague Conference, was accepted by all the nations of the world except three small nations-Costa Rica, Honduras, and Korea, the last named of which has since lost its independence. It was thus, to all intents and purposes, a unanimous and universal compact of all nations. It formed the signatory nations into a union by establishing certain processes for determining