stand around the council board, there will be a great clearance of the present lurid atmsophere. The quandary of crushing militarism by militant equipment, and the prevention of future wars by the threat of a warleague, may seem impractical,—even Utopian.

Moreover, the motives of the various powers may not at all consist with their present alleged high ethical aims. The danger is that each will be grasping for some selfish national end. Hence, I cannot think one can now form much of a tangible opinion, as to what alinement of nations will, or can, be made to ensure international peace.

TAP-ROOT OF WAR IN THE DYNASTIC SYSTEM

David Starr Jordan, Chancellor-Emer. Stanford University, California, Member National Advisory Board of the World's Court League.

Your questions are very hard to answer. If answers were easy, we should all be of one mind.

This condition is again buttressed by the three great philosophical conceptions needed for dynastic rule, the Supreme State, the Supreme Discipline or "Kultur" and the Supreme Duty of Conquest or "Social Darwin

ism."

It will require a vast deal of education and some hard knocks before the German people get their heads out of the clouds and their hands out of the blood of their fellow men. But the ground swell of German democracy is setting strongly towards conciliation and peace.

I cannot wholly accept the theory of the "League to Enforce Peace." Peace may be maintained but it cannot be enforced, and no league bound to use the force of arms will endure. It must work through Public Opinion and it must rely on the good will of enlightened peoples. Germany can neither be left out nor coerced to come in.

war lies in the dynastic system.

So

long as any great nation is controlled by an irresponsible oligarchy and its mediaeval traditions, its acts will be after its kind. No bond, agreement or fear will restrain it. The one great hope is therefore that of the success of German democrats in obtaining parliamentary government. The dynastic system has about three main supports, force, intrigue and superstition. So long as it endures it will be buttressed by a great army; an organization of serpentine intrigue. and a State Church leading up to "der gute, alte deutsche Gott."

force to resist aggressive force. Its purpose is altruistic but its members will fall apart whenever a selfish national purpose intrudes.

There are already signs of such intrusion and of yielding to it for the sake of military advantage. It would be a marvel if all nations held their ideals in the face of prospective victory. Already profiteers are very busy behind every army. The statesmanship of Great Britain shows signs of collapse under the vulgar insistence of a commonplace, journalistic hustler.

This in the presence of great aims

and grave danger. Without this crisis, no coalition for ideal purposes will hold together in the presence of dynastic intrigue.

The chief hope I see is in a democratic Germany, sufficiently regenerate to be used as a fulcrum against autocracy and war.

THE SILHOUETTE OF A NEW WORLD

General F. D. Légitime, Port-au-Prince, Haiti, Member International Council of the World's Court League.

As I have had occasion to tell you before, your valuable magazine justifies by its character the interest which it arouses and the sympathy which one feels with its editors. The letter in which you kindly ask me to collaborate with you shows moreover the advantage and the value in further defining the goal toward which we strive. I must therefore heartily approve the sensible plan that you have formed of conducting an inquiry concerning the projected formation of a league of nations.

My answer to the question ought not, it seems to me, to differ from that of the other members of the Council who consider the European crisis, this world war, in a general way, as the result of an evolution in which people suddenly uprooted and thrown out of their normal environment have each acted in accordance with their abilities and their re

sources.

The result of that is as disquieting as it is disastrous. And because it is without precedent in history, some people have thought for a moment that they saw in it the sign of the

time predicted for the end of the world.

It is nothing of the kind. However, without optimism or pessimism one can say this, that since the war there really is a change in the world, particularly in the relations between peoples, races, classes, and even individuals, relations which have become spontaneously more cordial and more fraternal under the empire of a common idea or for the defense of a common interest.

Does that not seem, if not yet the clearly defined form, at least the silhouette of a new or transformed world?

Who would wish after that to reestablish in their original severity the old conceptions in which national or individual egotism selfishly desired to keep humanity, or, so to speak, to petrify it? That does not mean that these conceptions, just like frontiers, are not necessary to keep in orderly condition the progressive evolution, the uplift of a people. Otherwise there would be anarchy, decadence such as no one would desire. But the actual crisis has indicated in what way and with what elasticity these social conceptions ought henceforth to improve.

And besides that, this crisis serves to demonstrate how wealth, power and the instruments of civilization itself are uncertain or dangerous when they do not work for the benefit of humanity or when their existence has not been assured by a trustworthy political organization.

What are we looking forward to or what do we want to accomplish

after the war?... The conditions of a durable peace.

But we can never think of peace without immediately considering justice the chief essential of it: "Historical Justice" whose duration is eternal. sunt.

Justicia et Pax osculatae

The point then is not to shout this principle from the housetops but to bring about the results of it as soon as possible in international relations as well as in social life.

If one considers the independence of states, their domestic law, and then their necessities, their natural prejudices and their history, the task appears immense and very trying.

Then in answer to your second question: There is certainly a definite relation between the exterior acts and the internal movements of the life of a people and one must take this into account if one has not forgotten that humanity while it does not form an organism like the others-does form a society of nations subject to natural law and common necessities. Have we not just said that the different nations have with great spontaneity instinctively united their efforts in view of a common interest?

From this point of view it seems that an alignment of nations formed with the consent and help of the others can have enough authority to enforce respect for laws that embody equity, the rational form of justice as it is also "the only fitting

basis in sight for improving and controlling international relations." What would be the difficulty about that?

To-day it is manifest that everybody sincerely desires peace-but a durable peace. Every one ardently wishes for it especially among the unhappy belligerents, who after more than three years are heroically defending the sacred soil of their country. That peace will be made some day. But how will this war end when the neutrals have not the power to stop its course?

When we see the ravages that it has caused and that it will yet cause we must, even while wishing for peace, think of the necessary reparations which justice demands.

We can not here consider that difficult question on which, however, the realization of our wishes depends.

While remaining within the limits that you have set for me, I can still sum up my opinion by saying: that, as a member of the International Council of the World's Court League, I adhere to the program of the Executive Committee of the Hague belonging to the Central Organization for a Durable Peace, which looks toward establishing an international institution, having, besides parliamentary control of foreign politics, the mission, by right of law and power, to make its suggestions from three points of view, the political, economic and military.

A

LITTLE volume entitled "League of Nations," by the Honorable Theodore Marburg, formerly Minister of the United States to Belgium, appears at this critical moment in international affairs. It will be read with interest and appreciation. The author undertakes to report upon steps taken to prepare the way for a League of Nations, although the work is really devoted for the most part to a review of the activities of the organization known as "The League to Enforce Peace." Some difficulty arises here inasmuch as the two propositions are not necessarily the same. The implications of a League of Nations are broader, more potential and in some respects more beneficent than the somewhat restricted and narrow proposals of the League to Enforce Peace.

The author has presented in condensed form and with much fairness the reasons why the need of restraining nations from war is imperative, and has set forth various considerations which enter into the project to which he is strongly committed. It is clearly seen that the present great conflict is a convincing argument against war as a means of settling international difficulties. The author

League of Nations. A chapter in the history of the movement. By Theodore Marburg, M.A., LLD. pp. 148. The Macmillan Company, New York. Price 50 cents.

is careful to point out that the methods for which he is working are not wholly ideal, neither do they satisfy those who stamp all war as an international crime. He would like, for example, to have the decisions of a World Court enforced and would be glad if all questions, as provided for in the so-called Taft Treaties, could be settled judicially or by arbitration; but he feels that so long a step forward cannot be taken at once. It is better to make a beginning, to get the nations committed to the plan of uniting their power to prevent war in the expectation that when this is accomplished further progress can be made.

In the discussion of a World Court, Commissions of Enquiry, Council of Conciliation and the development of International Law, the author shows his intimate acquaintance with the subject, based upon study and experience. Regarding the immense importance of an international court, he speaks with entire positiveness. As an influential member of the Society for Judicial Settlement and as the author of various papers on a World Court, his views are well known. To prove that such a Court is the very keystone of any League of Peace, he quotes Mr. Taft as declaring: "There is no other single way in which the cause of peace and disarmament can be so effectively promoted as by the firm establish

ment of a permanent international Court of Justice." As a matter of fact in this respect, The League to Enforce Peace and The World's Court League, of which Mr. Marburg is also an officer, occupy ground common to the League of Nations Society of Great Britain and the Central Organization for Durable Peace organized in Holland. Mr. Marburg recognizes that justice is a fundamental factor in any possible scheme for World Organization.

The founders of the organization treated in this volume have made. much of economic pressure as a deterrent, in case one nation assumes a threatening attitude toward another. In fact, it is given precedence of military force when a nation is to be restrained or disciplined; in the words of the official interpretation of this provision, "The signatory powers shall jointly employ diplomatic and economic pressure against any one of their number that threatens war against a fellow signatory without having first submitted its dispute for international enquiry," etc. Mr. Marburg refrains from discussing the use of economic pressure and in a note in the addendum frankly declares his opposition to it. He is justified in doing so, as the proposition for economic war or boycott against a criminal or unworthy nation was considered by the Economic Conference held in Paris, has been discarded as a preventive of war because of its evident impracticability, and the great powers are now making haste to declare for economic freedom. If Mr. Marburg had been disposed to

speak on this point, he would only need to have pointed to the present attempt to boycott a nation as a war measure to show how well-nigh impossible it is to make a sensible impression, even when the tremendous resources of many nations are mobilized for that purpose. Something, it is true, is done toward starving the civilian population, but several other nations, non-participants in the war, are necessarily brought to the last ditch of extremity.

The book contains as good a defense of the League's plan of enforcing peace as could be written. It recognizes many of the difficulties in the way; solves some of them and shows how others can be mitigated. But the plan is yet to be proposed to an International Conference. It is quite objectionable to some and is viewed by many with grave misgivings, for should it be pursued with official American backing, it might block the for way hensive and adequate plan of international restraint. For example, should it be found after the war that the world is ready for a drastic reduction of armaments and a well

some more compre

organized international constabulary to police those areas where disorder and trouble are likely to arise, it would be a sad mistake to persuade a peace conference to accept a device. which by its very mechanism fails to perform fully the function assigned to it.

After the present tragedy of war has run its course and the world beholds the spectacle of a selfish, con