and heighten the presumption in favor of the justness of its future action. It is to be expected that, as in the case of the Supreme Court of the United States, popular sentiment in favor of the international directorate would steadily increase as the nations voluntarily adopted its counsel. As popular confidence increased, its counsel and persuasion would have a moral force so great that no nation could refuse to follow the counsel given except by convincing the directorate itself and the public generally that the counsel was erroneous and unjust. Cooperative union is applicable to any minor group of nations as well as to the great group composed of all nations. Several contiguous small nations which are too heterogeneous to unite as a federal state may therefore sometimes find it possible to unite themselves in a cooperative union. By means of such minor cooperative unions, it may perhaps be possible to solve a perplexing problem which for centuries has disturbed the society of nations— that is, the problem of bringing about a real cooperation between the nations which are large and powerful and their neighbor-nations which are small and weak. This is of course a problem of equilibration. Europe particularly has been disturbed by this lack of equilibration. The European concert has always been ineffective as a union because of the close juxtaposition of large and powerful nations with others which are in comparison small and weak. The large and powerful nations will of course never consent to division, so that the only possible way of equilibrating the units of the Concert is through junction of the smaller nations so as to form new units comparable in size and strength with the larger. The small nations are too diverse in language, tradition and racial traits to unite themselves in groups as federal states, though all have a general character istic of Europeanization. The diversity which exists may perhaps be found to be no obstacle to the cooperative union of groups of these smaller nations; each group having a directorate instituted by itself. Such unions would not operate to diminish the independence of the nations which were members of them, any more than a cooperative union of all nations under a directorate would diminish the independence of all nations. On the contrary, the smaller nations would, as members of a minor cooperative union, in all probability have a more real independence than they now have. The groups of small nations lying between the large nations -the groups of so-called buffer-nations-have a common interest to unite cooperatively for the preservation of their independence against their powerful neighbors, and for the purpose of obtaining a real voice in the deliberations of the Concert, through their directorates. By the formation of the groups of buffer-nations into cooperative unions so that each of these unions would approximate in size and strength the average of the great nations, the European Concert might perhaps be equilibrated and might itself become an effective cooperative union. The same problem of small and large nations exists in all parts of the world. If the plan suggested should succeed in the European Concert, it would doubtless be applied universally. Viewing the nations as together constituting an imperfect union at the present time, as is doubtless the fact, all war is now in a sense civil war. If the nations were to recognize themselves as united in a cooperative union, all war would unquestionably be civil war, since war could occur only between members of the union. A cooperative union such as is above outlined, would doubtless tend to diminish civil war, but it would not wholly prevent it. Therefore, in order that a plan of cooperative union may be practicable, it must be supplemented by adequate provision for dealing with civil war; so that the union, which is theoretically indissoluble, may not, as the result of civil war, be in fact dissolved. But it clearly will not do to confer the power to deal with civil war upon the international directorate: for the possession of such power would necessitate its wielding armies and navies and would convert its counsel and persuasion into command and threat, thus depriving it of moral influence. The power to deal with civil war would have to be delegated to an international agency other than the directorate. This international agency might and doubtless ought to be called into existence and operation by the international directorate, in case of emergency, to preserve the cooperative union. It would be wholly consistent with the functions of the international directorate if it were to be authorized, upon the outbreak or threat of hostilities between nations, to summon a war-conference of all nations, or of all nations specially interested, or of all the non-belligerent nations, to meet at a time and place appointed by it, and to continue during the emergency, having power to concert measures for the preservation of the union by settling or suppressing the civil war. The proceedings of such a war-conference should, it would seem, be judicial in character; the object being to settle the dispute, and on failure of such settlement to adjudge between the belligerents so as to determine which of them ought on the whole to be regarded as the violator of the cooperative principle. The expectation would be that the non-belligerent nations would, upon such adjudication, side with the belligerent which was adjudged to have maintained the cooperative principle in the dispute, and would cooperate with it in enforcing the submission of its adversary to the coop erative régime. If after the adjudication, there should be a nearly equal division of the sympathy of the nonbelligerents, and the nations should form themselves into two nearly equal groups of belligerents, the civil war would be long, bloody and devastating. Therefore, every provision should be made for enabling the nonbelligerents, in a body, to side fairly, openly, justly and unanimously, after due investigation, consideration and judgment, with that one of the belligerents which was on the side of the union in the dispute; thus making hopeless the military position of the one adjudged rebellious and stifling the civil war in its inception. After the present great war is ended, a time is certain to arrive for considering the problem of international reorganization and reconstruction. The question will be, whether to maintain and perfect the existing cooperative union of the nations, or to change it into a universal federal state or into a universal confederation or league of nations. The first of these courses seems most expedient. This would necessitate a gradual development of the existing cooperative union by a long series of international conferences, each endeavoring to remove obstacles to international cooperation and to provide more and more effective organs and processes for directing the nations towards the observance of the cooperative principle. Through such a continuous development, cooperative union of the nations might be found adequate to produce the nearest approximation to international justice, order and peace of which the human race is capable. |