IN the retrospect of future historians the

year 1914 may have a place not less important than the year 1453, which has been accepted as marking the dividing line between medieval and modern history. The fall of Constantinople and the establishment of the Ottoman Turks in Europe revealed the insufficiency of the bond that had held Christendom together. In like manner the present European War reveals the inadequacy of purely national conceptions for the complete organization of mankind; for as Christendom failed to unite the whole world by faith, so civilization has failed to maintain itself by force. Whatever the future of the world is to be, it cannot be a mere repetition of the past. There will be a new Europe, which will radically change the order of the old, and mark the beginning of another era in the development of mankind.

The great tragedy of history has been the conflict between the universal humanism that Rome endeavored to establish, first by law and afterward by faith, and the tribalism of the primitive European

Greek Empire, the last bulwark of Roman imperialism, already long and bitterly alienated from the Roman Curia, paid the penalty of separatism, and fell before the Ottoman assault. With it the splendid postulates of the Roman imperial ideathe essential unity of mankind, the supremacy of law based upon reason and divine command, the moral solidarity of all who accepted the formulas of faith, and the effective organization of peace as a condition of human happiness—seemed to have suffered a fatal catastrophe. In place of the Pax Romana, Faustrecht, the right of the mailed fist, widely prevailed within the confines of Christendom. Slowly dying during a thousand years, the traditions of the ancient world, which the Greek Empire had endeavored to preserve long after they had been undermined by tribalism in the West, were now definitively abandoned. The future was seen to belong to the separate nations, which alone possessed a strong sense of unity. The disparity of races, the spirit of local independence, the conflict between the spiritual and the temporal forms of obedience, combined to render possible the development of powerful national monarchies, and dynastic ambition was eager to make use of them for its own designs.

IT was Machiavelli who expounded the new theory of the state and the methods of securing its advancement; and in this he was inventing no system of his own, but merely stating in definite terms the principles which successful monarchs were already putting into practice. ""The Prince,'" declares Villari, “had a more direct action on real life than any other book in the world, and a larger share in

emancipating Europe from the Middle Ages"; but it would be more exact to say that Machiavelli's work, written in 1513 and published in 1532, was the perfect expression of an emancipation from moral restraints already far advanced. The Christian idealism of the Middle Ages had already largely disappeared. The old grounds of obligation had been swept away. Men looked for their safety to the state rather than to the church; and the state, as Machiavelli's gospel proclaimed it, consisted in absolute and irresponsible control exercised by one man who should embody its unity, strength, and authority. Thus began the modern world.

With the dissolution of the feudal organization through the predominance of the national monarchies disappeared the sense of mutual obligation which under the feudal régime had constituted an ethical bond between the different orders of society. What remained was the bare conception of irresponsible "sovereignty" considered as a divinely implanted, absolute, unlimited, and indivisible prerogative of personal rule, the charter right of each dynasty to seek its own aggrandizement, preponderance, and glory regardless of all considerations of race, reason, or religion.

With such a conception of the nature of the state, the whole system of international relations was necessarily based upon military force. Until Grotius appealed to the ethical motive, and the treaties of Westphalia recognized the de jure rights of territorial sovereignty, there was among the nations of Europe no semblance of public law which jurisprudence could recognize. But even after the Peace of Westphalia, the so-called "law of nations" was little more than a theoretical acceptance of the equal rights of autonomous sovereigns, each of whom could work his will without interference within his own domains, leaving to each ruler the unquestioned prerogative of dictating the religion of his own subjects, of taxing them, of arming them, and of making war with their united forces for his own advantage. In effect, the Peace of West

phalia, by rendering even petty princes absolute, permitted more than three hundred independent rulers to carry on the sanguinary game of war for plunder or conquest without restraint; and all, left free to destroy one another, were thus entitled by public law, through war and diplomacy, to seek their fortunes with complete autonomy. Sovereignty, defined as "supreme power," regardless of any principle of right, was conceived to be the very essence of the state. It remained simply to discover by a trial of strength which power was entitled to be esteemed supreme.

When in its moral awakening the Europe of the latter part of the eighteenth and early part of the nineteenth century began to think for itself,-or at least to follow the thinking of Locke, Montesquieu, Rousseau, Kant, and others who sought to find the true foundations of the state in the conception of law based upon the nature and necessities of men rather than upon dynastic power,-Europe found itself under the incubus of this sinister inheritance.

Without a convulsion that would shake the whole of Europe to its foundations it was powerless to throw it off. Rousseau had in "Le contrat social" merely transferred the idea of sovereignty from the monarch to the people, but he had not essentially altered its character. It was still "supreme power," still the "absolute, indivisible, and perpetual" thing which Bodin, seeking to give royalty a philosophical pedestal to stand upon, had said it was. Inherent in the people, it was still the personification of all the public powers; and the volonté générale, the general will, regardless of its moral qualities, was the unlimited, irresponsible source of law, the possessor of all, the dictator of all, and the ultimate authority in all things, which the individual man must respect and obey.

When the French Revolution judged and condemned the king, it was done as a sovereign act, and was, therefore, not permitted to be questioned by the monarchs of Europe. Was not sovereignty

territorial? Then it belonged to France. Was it not indivisible? Then it belonged to the French people. Was it not perpetual? Who, then, could ever take it away or in any way dispute it? And thus the volonté générale of one nation, having swept away the monarchy, soon rose to the height of a war on all kings; and in the person of the residuary legatee of the Revolution, Napoleon Bonaparte, made emperor by the assent of the volonté générale of France, assumed to act as sovereign over the whole of Europe.

There was no moment during the whole revolutionary period when sovereignty ceased to be conceived as unlimited supreme power. Recent French writers not only recognize, but emphasize, the fact. The distinguished critic and academician Emile Faguet declares:

The French Revolution neither enthroned individualism nor suppressed absolutism. It did precisely the contrary. . . . It put the sovereignty of the people in place of the sovereignty of the king, and it did nothing else. . . . It was the absolute effacement of the individual by the majority of his compatriots... votre Majorité in place of votre Majesté-that is, without qualification, the sum and substance of the French Revolution.

And thus the malign inheritance of Europe, in so far as it was affected by the Revolution, is essentially unchanged. Monarchy and democracy alike, without distinction, have regarded sovereignty merely as "supreme power," "absolute, indivisible, and perpetual." Thus it stands in all the text-books of the law of nations. So many sovereignties, so many absolute autocrats. Being the sole sources of law, how can they be subject to law? And there being no law which they may not set aside, since it is but their creature, sovereign nations are irresponsible, and have no more to do with moral right or wrong than so many untamed animals seeking to satisfy their appetites. The right to make war at will and to be answerable to no one, that was, and is, the accepted doc

trine of the old Europe, which merely asserted itself anew in 1914.

This does not signify that it has never been contested. More than three hundred years ago a now almost-forgotten German jurist, though recognizing sovereignty as the foundation of the state, defined it as an attribute not of the people as an unorganized mass, but of a "body politic" organized for the promotion of justice, deriving its authority as a moral entity from the rights of its constituent members, whom it is organized to protect against wrong, and therefore from its very nature charged with mutual rights and obligations. The only authority it can claim is authority to defend the rights and interests thus committed to its guardianship. As a moral entity-for this is what Althusius taught that a state founded on rights necessarily is-it should be ready to apply the principles of justice and equity in its dealings with other states.

Were this conception of sovereignty generally accepted, justice and equity would not halt at the frontiers of a nation. The right of war would exist, but it would not be, as the old Europe has generally recognized it to be, a virtually unlimited right. There could be, under this conception, no permanently subject peoples. There could be no world dominion. There could be no legal schemes of conquest. War would mean the punishment of offenders against the law of nations, the suppression of anarchy and brigandage, resistance to the ambitions of the conqueror.

But the old Europe has never been disposed to give to sovereignty that meaning. It could not do so while it was identified with royal legitimacy. That principle triumphed a hundred years ago in the Congress of Vienna, which strove to neutralize the effects of the French Revolution by ending forever the sovereignty of the people. Then followed the effort to establish Europe firmly upon the principles of absolutism by crushing out all constitutional aspirations. To accomplish this the unlimited right of war was necessary, for without armed intervention by the allied sovereigns the task was hopeless.

Legitimacy was to be everywhere sustained by the Holy Alliance. Wherever a state adopted a constitution, the powers bound themselves at the Congress of Troppau, “if need be by arms, to bring back the guilty state into the bosom of the Alliance."

The unlimited right of a sovereign state to make war for any reason it considered sufficient, or for no reason at all, thus seemed to be written into the public law of Europe. That was the unhallowed inheritance which modern democracies have received from absolutism. Being entitled to all the prerogatives of sovereignty as historically understood, they have not repudiated the heritage. And thus they have tacitly accepted the evil principle of the despotisms against whose iniquities they have rebelled, and whose pernicious influence they were struggling to throw off.

In the call for the first Hague Conference "all questions concerning the political relation of states" were expressly excluded from the deliberations of the conference. In that, and in the second conference, rules were laid down regarding the manner of conducting war both on land and sea; but nowhere were any regulations prescribed regarding the causes or conditions of declaring war that were to be considered legal or illegal, just or unjust.

As one of the best-accredited authorities on the subject says:

Theoretically, international law ought to determine the causes for which war can be

justly undertaken; in other words, it ought to mark out, as plainly as municipal law what constitutes a wrong for which a remedy may be sought at law. It might also not unreasonably go on to discourage the commission of wrongs by investing a state seeking redress with special rights, and by subjecting a wrong-doer to special disabilities.

In fact, however, it does nothing of the kind. The reason is not merely that there would be no means except war for enforcing such rules,- for that would apply

equally to the regulations concerning the manner of conducting war that have been explicitly laid down,-but because no sovereign state has thus far been disposed to pledge itself not to engage in war except under conditions that in harmony with its own principles of legislation would be considered just. "Hence both parties in every war are regarded as being in an identical position, and consequently possessed of equal rights." Aggressor and victim alike, triumphant force and helpless innocence, these are held in equal honor by the public law of Europe as it now stands, and this law has been tacitly accepted by the "family of nations"!

It is upon this unlimited right to resort to war, and the consequent general irresponsibility in international relations, that the idea of neutrality reposes; and yet neutrality is historically an immense step forward in the path of progress when compared with the Machiavellian doctrine that no opportunity for gain from the quarrels of others should be allowed to pass unutilized. In every war, Machiavelli declares, one side or the other will win, and the wise course for an intelligent prince to pursue is to join at the proper moment with the probable winner, whoever he may be, in order to be able to share with him the spoils of victory.

The modern doctrine of neutrality, which considers war an unavoidable evil, is no doubt an amelioration of Machiavelli's policy; for, instead of widening the range of hostilities, it aims to narrow the area of conflict. It is inspired, however, chiefly by the consideration that it is a national right to avoid the infection of a pestilence that the neutral power has not caused and for which it is not responsible. So long as the belligerents, who are conceded the privilege of mutual destruction, -but often with very unequal facilities for engaging in the conflict,-do not too deeply offend the neutral states by their activities, powerful nations feel justified in standing silent and inactive while weak states are crushed into subjection and the laws of war, which they themselves have helped to make, are violated.

From a moral point of view this appears to be a strange proceeding for a member of the "family of nations"; but it must be considered that this is a family cf a very peculiar kind. In it each member, by tacit consent, is believed to fulfil his whole duty by looking solely after his own interests. Governments, it is held, are in every case responsible to their own constituents for the preservation of the safety and well-being of the nations intrusted to their care, and consequently they cannot act with the freedom of a private person. They may not, therefore, incontinently plunge their people into war without reasons that involve the national interests. Until there is a better organization of international relations, this condition must continue; but it is rapidly coming to be perceived that, if civilization is not to suffer shipwreck, a better organization must be sought.

BEFORE attempting to find a basis for a revision of international relations it is necessary to consider how intimately national interests have become associated with war. For a long time all the interests of the state were regarded as personal to the sovereign. All its territory was his ter ritory. All the property of the nation was his property, of which the people enjoyed only the usufruct. Even their persons and their lives were at his disposal, for they were in all respects his subjects. To-day the identity of the sovereign is changed, but not the conception of sovereignty. The people, standing in the place of the sovereign, claim the right of succession to all the royal prerogatives. The national interests have become their interests. The appeal to their patriotism rests upon this ground. The power, gain, and glory of the state are represented to be theirs. Even where it has not entirely superseded the monarch, the nation believes itself to have entered into partnership with him, and the people consider themselves shareholders in the vast enterprise of expanding dominion. Even the beggar in the street is assured that it is his country; and though ragged and

hungry, he takes a pride in his prietorship.

It is the nation's territory, indu commerce, and prestige that are no question. And government, even the ernment of the people, is no longer m protective. It enters into every kin business, owns railways, steamship 1 manufactories, everything involving life and prosperity of the people. state has become an economic as wel a political organ of society. The mo national state is, in fact, a stupendous autonomous business corporation, the portentous and the most lawless busi trust, and views other nations as its b ness rivals, aiming at the control of for markets, and of the sources of raw terials wherever they may exist. these vast economic entities, with vision fixed on gain, combine not only command of armies and navies, but a lute freedom from effective legal res tion with immensely concentrated we such as the kings and emperors of the never had at their disposal.

Whatever, from an internal and s point of view, the merits or defects of extension of state functions may be, are bristling with possibilities of and when modern nations engage in it is no longer a dynastic adventure,

people's war. Commanding the stre and resources of a whole people, and ing for its alleged interests, these g economic corporations are fitted for gression as well as for defense. If were subject to the usual laws of 1 ness that prevail in the regulation private enterprises within their borders, in accordance with the princ they apply at home, these mailed armed knights of trade might not dangerous to the world's peace; but are not subject to these or to any regulations. They recognize no law w they feel themselves obliged to obey. heriting by tradition from the past leged rights of absolute sovereignty, equipped with military forces on land sea, they are engaged in a struggle supremacy which they would not f