is to disarm it to that extent; and it may be assumed that no one would propose even a partial disarmament of the British Navy except as part of a general disarmament on land as well as on sea. Those who see in 'Navalism' a danger on the same plane as militarism mistake the mischief which is covered by the latter term. It does not refer to the mischief of being military but of being militaristic; it does not refer to the deliberate maintenance of large and efficient forces whether on land or sea; it denotes rather an attitude of national mind and aspiration, which is reflected in the provocative policy of the international thruster.' A charge of Navalism Great Britain may admit, but she has never used her sea-power in such a way as to be open to the charge of naval militarism.

We have not hitherto mentioned any of the specifically German interpretations of the term 'Freedom of the Seas. To one of these Mr Cababé refers (p. 99), in an amusing passage, when printing an account of an interview with the German Chancellor, BethmannHollweg, in July 1916. In that interview the then Chancellor described as the Freedom of the Seas the condition of things which would have been set up by the Declaration of London. He is reported to have said that the Contracting Powers thereby guaranteed that hereafter wars should be conducted solely between the parties to them on land, or before the actual ports of the enemy, leaving the nations not involved in the struggle to carry on unembarrassed and unannoyed "those processes of peace," the activities of legitimate trade, communication, and travel, just as though all the world were friends. A freedom of the seas of that type would indeed have been ideal for a powerful and aggressive land-power! It is with a reference to another variation of the German freedom of the seas that Triepel concludes his pamphlet.

There is, however, another "Freedom of the Seas" which consists of something different from paper stipulations. It is the Freedom of the Seas from the tyranny of England. . . . Let it be our business to acquire sea-power; then we shall have a free sea also. Let it be our business that this war makes England smaller and ourselves bigger. Let it be our

business to gain naval bases overseas, and above all an exit from the "wet triangle," and to get into our hands the coast of Flanders and a sure land-approach thereto. Then shall we have conquered the Freedom of the Seas for ourselves, and also for all those neutrals who groan under the arbitrariness of England, and the world will breathe again.'

That dream has vanished, and the world does indeed breathe again; but what a different world would it have been if the British fleet had been fettered by a 'Freedom of the Seas' under cover of which German troopships could have sailed without molestation from their own territorial waters to within cannon-shot of our shores; if the Allied navies had not been entitled, by occupying the sea against Germany, to destroy her maritime lines of communication; if German merchantmen could have put their wireless installations at the service of their navy in all quarters of the ocean, and have acted as ubiquitous bases of supply to German submarines; if Germany could have carried on her overseas trade as in time of peace and have obtained unlimited quantities of cotton, rubber, oil, ores and food through neutral ports and by the aid of neutral ships! British sea-power in conjunction with that of her co-belligerents checked all this without inflicting on neutral States greater hardships than they could with reason be expected to have to submit to as members of a community in which war is still a recognised institution. For this service we pay our homage to the men of those great leviathans (to adapt the phrase of Hobbes), to which we owe, under the immortal God, our peace and defence.'

JOHN PAWLEY BATE.

Art. 12.-A LEAGUE OF NATIONS.

I.

1. British League of Nations Society. Publications. London, 1916-1918.

2. American League to Enforce Peace. Proceedings, and subsequent Publications. Washington, 1916-1918.

3. Organisation Centrale pour une Paix Durable; Recueil de Rapports. The Hague, 1916-1917.

4. Proposals for the Prevention of Future Wars. By Viscount Bryce and Others. Allen & Unwin, 1917.

6

5. Inaugural Address delivered by Lord Robert Cecil, as Chancellor of the University of Birmingham. Times,' Nov. 13, 1918.

The

6. International Government. By L. S. Woolf. Published by the Fabian Society. London, 1916.

7. Neutrality versus Justice. By A. J. Jacobs. Unwin, 1917. 8. Les Bases d'une Paix Durable. By Auguste Schvan. Paris: Alcan, 1917.

9. The Next War. By Sir C. Walston. Cambridge, 1918. 10. The League of Nations. An Historical Argument. By Prof. A. F. Pollard. Oxford, 1918.

11. The League of Nations and its Problems. Lectures. By Prof. L. Oppenheim.

Three

Longmans, 1919.

A LEAGUE of Nations. Is this the same thing as a League of Peace? In other words, is it the sole object of a League of Nations to procure and maintain peace, or are there other reasons for considering a League of Nations a good thing in itself? Is it an end and not merely a means? Further, is it a League of Nations, or a Union of all Nations, that should be desired and is unobtainable?

Among the writers on this subject there are those who look to peace and security only, who would leave every nation to work out its individual development uncontrolled except by the police constable. There are

others who look to a great Super-Nation or Super-State, the authorities of which will direct the energies and regulate the proceedings, and provide for the education and development, of all the nations in the combination,

just as they desire to make every state or nation a universal provider and tutor of all its citizens.

The writers of this second school would have, not merely a super-national Tribunal with a super-national police force to prevent war, but a super-national Legislature which would regulate all relations of States inter se, and of citizens of one State with another State or the citizens thereof, in peace as well as in war—the course of trade, the rules of occupation and development of unsettled countries, grants and concessions, trusts, cartels, changes of nationality and domicil, and so forth -with a super-national Executive to enforce the enactments of this super-national Legislature. They would desire that this Legislature should meet periodically and find itself work to do-a strong temptation to interference.

The most extreme and logical exponent of this view is Auguste Schvan, a writer who would abolish nations and nationality, and make every one a citizen of the world, temporarily subject to the control of the Local Government within whose area he happened to be, as a Londoner may be said to be subject to the control of the London County Council. Between these Local Governments Schvan does not conceive of any dispute arising. All disputes would be between individual citizens and some Local Government; and, to deal with these, he would establish tribunals deriving their authority from collective humanity and sitting in fantastically chosen centres.

Clever as Schvan is in his destructive criticism of other plans, his constructive scheme is such an exaggeration of socialist ideas as to amount to a caricature. Nevertheless, though orthodox Socialists may refuse to accept him as an exponent of their teaching, they are open to the charge which Dr N. Murray Butler, in the interview reported in The Observer' of Dec. 8, 1918, makes against them, that they have in mind the destruction of all the essential elements characteristic of nationality, in order to bring about what I have sometimes called "colloidal" or jelly-like internationalism without real nations.'

Several English writers, who are supporters of the League of Nations Society, are open to the rebuke of

Dr Butler. Thus Mr Lowes Dickinson wants states to learn to legislate and administer in common'; and Mr Hobson wants an International Executive and Legislature. Sir Charles Walston, on the contrary, does not believe in a Supreme Parliament or Sovereign State dominating and limiting the Sovereignty of the individual nations.' He does contemplate, what is rather utopian, a super-national Court whose members will be purged of all national feeling, who will become citizens of the world and extra-national, and will live in some extra-national area; he would back up his Court with a super-national Army and Navy, which is to be the only army and navy; and, having thus procured disarmament, he would dispense with a League of Nations, except in so far as all would bind themselves to obey this Court. He would make a Federation, but one without power to make laws. His conception is a peculiar one and is open to its own special and rather obvious objections. In his way, though in a different way from the Socialists, he wants to over-organise.

The two schools might agree that, whether such international co-operation is desirable or not, it must be a later development; that peace and security must precede it; and that all can travel together for the present on a pretty long common road. When, however, the parting of the ways is reached, it is possible that those of the more moderate school will point out to the over-regulators that their future course may lead to destruction, that compulsory unity will bring about its own disruption, and that, if the schemes of Universal Monarchy which captivated the publicists of Roman and later times down to the 18th century proved impracticable, it is likely that a Universal Republic will dissolve into its component atoms.

To pass to the next question. Is the object to be aimed at a League of Nations or a Union of all Nations? A League, in its usual sense, is a combination of persons or States formed to enable them to unite in their dealings with regard to some external person or State with whom they are brought into relations of some degree of opposition, if not of actual hostility. In order to produce this common action there must be harmony Vol. 231.-No. 458.

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