weight has undoubtedly been added by the entry of the United States into the war. There seems, indeed, to be a tendency to look upon this epoch-making event as throwing upon us and our Allies an entirely new obligation. Whatever the objects for which we have hitherto been fighting, it is argued that the supreme aim of the Allies must henceforth be the realisation of the ideal of an international commonwealth, based on the principles of pure democracy and sanctioned by the organised force of humanity.' It appears to be assumed by many people that what was, after all, but the expression of the President's personal views is the settled policy of the United States, and that we should in some sort. be untrue to the new union of purpose between the two great branches of the English-speaking race were we to refuse to commit ourselves to it. This attitude, as might be expected, is most pronounced in quarters most out of touch with patriotic sentiment. The Nation,' for instance, outstripping all other competitors in somewhat fulsome adulation of the American people and government, is eager to subordinate purely British interests, and hopes to see, as the outcome of the future Peace Congress, the establishment of some real 'Society of Nations,' which would only be possible, it implies, ' under the leadership of the United States.' *

This outburst of sentiment is perhaps natural in view of the deep gratification, which all of us feel, at the bridging of the chasm which has so long divided us from the American people, with whom we have always been conscious of being united by innumerable ties of interest and sympathy. The fact remains, however, that the ideal of a League of Nations must be judged by us upon its merits; nor is there in the circumstances under which America entered the war anything which throws upon us a fresh obligation in this matter. It is true that an ideal motive lay behind the action of America in taking up arms, just as it did behind that of Great Britain. It is untrue to say that, in either case, the immediate impulse to action was anything but the vividly realised necessity of safeguarding the national honour and interests. Great Britain. declared war, and persists in the war, not only because she was bound in honour to protect the rights of Belgium, but

• War and Peace, Supplement for May 1917, p. 5.

because the German policy of expansion by conquest threatened her vital interests. America equally declared war because her honour and her vital interests left her no other alternative. This the President himself has explained in quite unequivocal language.

'I have again and again stated the very serious and long-continued wrongs which the Imperial German Government has perpetrated against the rights of commerce of the citizens of the United States. The list is long and overwhelming. No nation that respected itself or the rights of humanity could have borne those wrongs any longer.'-The Times, 24th of May 1917.

Nor is this all. For some time past there has been a growing realisation among thoughtful Americans that it has been to British sea-power alone that the United States has owed her long immunity from attack; and the moral has been enforced by Mr. Gerard who, speaking with all the authority of a former American ambassador at Berlin, has publicly declared that, had Germany succeeded in destroying this power, she would certainly have directed her next attack against the United States. Thus, although it may be true that America had nothing to gain by entering the war, she had much to lose by remaining out of it. We have welcomed her participation for many reasons, of which reasons of sentiment are not the least; but there is no obligation upon us, because of this sentiment, to commit ourselves blindfold to the carrying out of the ideal programme put forward by the President as the ultimate justification of his action in the eyes of humanity.

This programme was made by me the subject of some criticism in the last number of this Review. I there ventured to challenge President Wilson's claim that the tradition of the American people gives them a 'peculiar right' to appear as the pacific nation par excellence; I pointed out the dangers to the British Empire and to the nations at large involved in the acceptance of the conditions laid down by the President as essential to the participation of the United States in a world-union; and I drew attention to the significant omission from his programme of any reference to the principle of universal freedom of trade and intercourse, which to many is the absolute sine quâ non of a peaceful co-operation between nations. But no attempt was made, either in the President's

address or in my own criticism of it, to deal with the fundamental practical problems involved in the organisation of a League of Nations. The object of the present article is to contribute to the discussion of these problems, mainly by drawing attention to the lessons to be derived from a study of the essential character and the practical working of those actual inter-State systems which have been put forward, at one time or another, as models for a general international federation.

It may be noted, by way of preface, that a number of very able political writers have of late years been busy clearing the ground for a world-system by a lively attack on the whole traditional theory of sovereignty and independence. Both Mr. Delisle Burns and Mr. Harold Laski argue that the State is but one among many groups in which men are associated for common purposes, and that as such it is entitled to no special pre-eminence. It follows that the sovereignty, i.e. the right and power to enforce its will (a right and power actually limited by consent), which is predicated of the State in its relation with the groups-churches, trade unions, and the like—within it, is equally illusory when conceived as 'independence' of other state-groups. Sovereign States, Mr. Delisle Burns insists, are not in fact independent, but interdependent, and increasingly so with every advance of modern civilisation. If this fact has not hitherto been recognised and the war proves how far it is from recognition! -this is because the morality of nations has lagged behind that of the people who compose them. A general levelling up of international morality is, he concludes, the sine quâ non of the establishment of an efficient international system. There are not wanting signs of the growth of an uneasy feeling that this lack of international morality is due to the excessive exaltation of the principle of nationality during the last hundred years, the disastrous results of which have been most conspicuous in the case of Germany.

Into the vast questions opened up by these speculations it is not proposed to enter here. The new world which will be formed out of the ruins of the old is even now being roughhewn by the elemental passions unchained by the war, and it may be doubted whether it will be the providence of the philosophers that will shape its ends. It may be that the

inherited passions and prejudices which we associate with nationalism, as they have grown up among the decay and violent ruin of an old and outworn order, will die down under the influence of a more broadly humane culture. But he would indeed be sanguine who should assert that this change of heart will come about as the immediate outcome of the war, or could safely be assumed as the basis of the settlement to follow. Men may change, but human nature is unchanging ; and in human nature the passion of hate is apt to be more constant than the passion of love. 'Men's natures,' wrote Lord Burleigh, are apt to strive not only against the present smart, but to revenge by-past injury, though they be never so well contented thereafter.' There can be no doubt that this war will leave behind it a terrible legacy of hate between many of the nations engaged in it, and it is not upon a basis of hate that an international commonwealth can be built up. The problem of international relations after the war will, in fact, remain very much what it was before the war--namely, that of adjusting the relations between intensely self-conscious and mutually antagonistic national groups, of very varying size and power, in such a way as to preserve the peace between them. This adjustment has for more than two centuries past been the task of diplomacy, which may be defined as the regulated intercourse between sovereign States by means of their accredited agents. The principles and practice of diplomacy have been exposed, especially since the outbreak of the war, to attacks which seem to me to be exaggerated; for the debt which the world owes to organised diplomacy, at least during the last hundred years, is greater than many people are willing to allow. The immediate question, however, is not whether diplomacy has failed, but whether the system which it is proposed to substitute for it-namely, a federal or quasi-federal world-union involving a certain sacrifice of the traditional notions of sovereignty and independencewould succeed any better in providing a firm guarantee of peace.

The programme which has found the most general acceptance is that of the American League to Enforce Peace, of which the provisions are as follows:

First: All justiciable questions arising between the signatory Powers, not settled by negotiation, shall, subject to the limitations

of treaties, be submitted to a judicial tribunal for hearing and judgment, both upon the merits and upon any issue as to its jurisdiction of the question.

'Second: All other questions arising between the signatories and not settled by negotiation, shall be submitted to a council of conciliation for hearing, consideration, and recommendation.

'Third: The signatory Powers shall jointly use forthwith both their economic and military forces against any one of their number that goes to war, or commits acts of hostility against another of the signatories before any question arising shall be submitted, as provided in the foregoing.'

It will be noted that this programme carefully avoids the assertion of any principles, such as those laid down by President Wilson, on which there is a fundamental difference of opinion ab initio; and it is for this reason that it has been so widely accepted. It represents, in fact, no very radical breach with the traditional procedure in international relations. The task of settling disputes between nations is still in the first instance to be left to diplomacy. The obligation of submitting justiciable disputes to an arbitral tribunal is not carried beyond that which has already been defined in many treaties between the Powers. The suggested Council of Conciliation is, in effect, but a device for bringing collective diplomacy to bear on questions in dispute, with a view to the avoidance of war, as has happened often enough in the past, e.g. in the case of the Berlin Conference of 1886 which demarcated the respective spheres of influence of the Powers in Africa. The sole important innovation is the obligation laid on the members of the League by the terms of the third article; but, though they must submit their cases, there is no obligation, other than moral, upon them to accept the decisions arrived at. Finally, in the absence of any provision to the contrary, it is to be presumed that the right of any State to secede from the union is maintained. In short, the League to Enforce Peace, thus conceived, would not constitute a federal union, but would at most be a somewhat more elaborately organised concert or alliance of sovereign Powers.

Other programmes, backed by a less weight of expert authority, but put forward by groups widely and influentially supported, carry the process much further in the direction of international federalism. Of these, two of the most recent may serve as generally typical. First the Proposal of a British