between the different members of the League, with provisions for settling disputes between them; and to that extent a League promotes peace.

But a League is not the less a League because, while it promotes peace between its members, it does so in order the more effectually to act in opposition to, or even to wage war with, other States. It may be said that the Delphic Amphictyony had for its sole object the provision of mutual peace and goodwill; but, if so, it is the only League of that kind known to history. The Delian League, the early Swiss Confederation, the towns forming the early Dutch Republic, the original Confederation of the revolted Colonies of British North America, had for their main object a defensive alliance against an external foe. The so-called Grand Design, mythically attributed to Henry IV of France, was a combination against Spanish-Austrian power.

Is the future League to be such a combination, made in reference to, and possibly against, other states or nations of the globe-Germany, for instance, or the Yellow Peril; or is it to seek to become an all-embracing Union of all the peoples of the globe, feeling itself imperfect till this development has been obtained, and so framing its statutes as to facilitate instead of preventing such a Union? It is impossible to say what effect may have been produced by the sudden and total collapse of the Central Powers; but, at any rate, six months ago, there were many people who dreaded the inclusion of the Central Powers, and particularly that of Germany, in any League of Peace; who felt that these Powers were not to be trusted; who dreaded their might and subtlety, and preferred to keep them out, even at the risk of their forming themselves into a rival League.

It is to be hoped that such counsels will not now prevail. They were counsels of despair, despair of the peace of the world. If followed, they would have divided the world into two great factions, each armed to the teeth, with a burden of armaments ever increasing, and each bidding against each other for the nations which have been neutral in the present strife, including some of those States of South America which seem destined to take place among the Great Powers of the future. Lord Robert Cecil, in his recent inaugural

address as Chancellor of the University of Birmingham, took the opposite and the wiser and more Christian view. His scheme for a League of Nations would include all. Indeed he went so far as to suggest that, if any State refused to join the League, it might be forced into it by means of a boycott. Other writers, again, including some who are most keen that the League should include Germany, have drawn the line at what they are pleased to call, somewhat insolently, the backward nations.'

Still, while the object of the League should be that it should embrace all, a start may be made on less ambitious lines; but it would be madness to throw away the opportunities of the coming Peace, and one of its terms ought to be that the belligerent Powers, at all events the chief of them, should enter into a treaty establishing as between themselves a League of Nations, and making provision for the accession of the neutral Powers, subject of course to certain conditions.

Given that there should be a League of Nations for the purpose of preserving peace, that it should be as nearly world-wide as possible, and that it should confine itself, at any rate at first, to the simple object of preserving peace-given the three postulates of this article, what should be the machinery?

It cannot be too plainly laid down that this is a matter for experts. Christian teachers and philanthropic writers have done their part when they have brought the nations to the point of desiring peace, to forgetfulness or pardon of past quarrels and injuries, and to the desire of mutual goodwill and fellowship. These are preliminaries with regard to which it is easy to write and speak in eloquent, even gushing terms; but it is too common for zealots and reformers to think that all is done when they have obtained the acceptance of highsounding general principles. It is to the drudgery of spade-work that recourse must be had if these principles are to be made sure; and the task is by no means easy.

The Emperor Nicholas II of Russia, when he promoted the calling together of the last Hague Conference, sincerely desired peace. So did many of the plenipotentiaries and at least some of the States which deputed

them. But the Conference has done little except afford topics for mutual recrimination between the States engaged in the recent war, to whom it has been easy and comforting to be able from time to time to accuse their enemies of breaches of the several Hague Conventions. Events have shown that such arrangements as were the only outcome of the last Hague Conference are barriers worthless against any serious impulse towards war. We must begin in another way.

It is useless to set up any system of tribunals of arbitration, however excellent and complete, if States inclined to war can put them aside. History shows that this was not the way in which internal peace and good order were enforced between the citizens of a country. The first step in civilisation is the regulation, the second and more effective step is the prohibition, of private war. When this is carried out, men are forced to have recourse to the tribunals. The tribunals must of course be efficient and trustworthy, or else men will revert to private war. But the fact that the law is open and men can implead one another is not enough, unless men are shown that this is the only way in which they will be allowed to get redress. We must, therefore, have first a prohibition of war, with effective sanction to enforce the prohibition; and secondly, side by side, arrangements by which states and nations forbidden to assert their rights, or to redress their wrongs by war, shall nevertheless obtain appropriate relief. In homely language the defect of past schemes for International Arbitration is that they put the cart before the horse.

The first provision of the treaty should be to prohibit war. No fighting in the street, please. The international police constable, whoever he may be, will say: 'Settle your differences some other way, we do not allow fighting.' It is a great merit of Mr Jacobs' treatise, 'Neutrality versus Justice,' as it is of Prof. Pollard's Historical Argument,' that this provision is placed first, and that these authors insist that it should be firmly enforced.

But, secondly, to make this enforcement feasible, there must be a safety valve, and corresponding devices for settling quarrels; otherwise, in spite of all the prohibitions in the world and all the forces behind them, States will fight. There must be some body or bodies to

decide and determine international disputes, whether Arbitrators, or a Court, or a Council of Nations, or all combined; and this international organ must (1) be ready and willing to act; (2) act justly; (3) have at its back moral and material forces. Civil experience shows that you may have a hierarchy of Courts of Justice; but, if they are procrastinating, unjust, or impotent, men will put them aside and return to private war. You will have Judge Lynch or the Ku-Klux Clan or the Mafia.

But it is not easy to establish a real International Court or Tribunal. Hitherto no one has ventured to do so. The schemes of the Hague Conferences, even of the second, fall far short of it. The essence of an efficient Tribunal or Court of Justice is that it is there, always in existence, not dependent upon the will of suitors or the agreement of disputants, but established from above, open to receive a complaint, and prepared to require the person complained of to come and answer the complaint, or defend himself against the charge.

The Hague Conferences never got so far as that; none of the International Treaties of Arbitration has got so far. The last Hague Conference purported indeed to establish a Court; but the so-called Court is only an office or bureau, to which disputant States anxious to come to terms, and wanting to find an independent body to settle their disputes, can have recourse for advice and guidance as to the procedure of arbitration, and in which they will find a panel of highly distinguished men from among whom they can choose their arbitrators. But, if one of the disputant States does not want to go to arbitration, nothing is done. The last Conference did indeed provide some machinery by which the disputants might be compulsorily sent to arbitration; but, even so, each disputant was to name an arbitrator, and the unwilling State could stop the whole proceeding by the simple process of not naming its arbitrator.

Moreover, there is a more subtle difficulty; the disputants have to determine what the dispute is about, what is the real question which the arbitrators are to decide. Now every lawyer knows that in many cases the statement of the question of itself determines the answer, and that often half the discussion turns upon the point, What is the question to be discussed? There

never has been any provision, either in the Hague Conventions, or in the most advanced international treaties, for settling this. What is wanted and what alone will supply a safety valve is a tribunal already made ready to hand, to which a suitor can come and make his complaint, as a plaintiff can take out a writ from a Court of Justice, and have the defendant, willingly or unwillingly, brought in to answer it.

Under the protection of such a system of jurisprudence and side by side with forensic litigation there exists in most civilised countries a practice of referring disputes to arbitrators, which in many cases suits the parties better than having recourse to the Courts; and so, in international disputes, there may be-and it is highly desirable that there should be-provision for arbitration, when the disputant States can agree upon the question to be decided and upon the composition of the arbitral tribunal. But beyond this, and in the background, there must be some permanent and self-sufficient tribunal to which, if the States cannot agree to arbitration, any disputant State may insist on applying, and which will take cognizance of the cause even against the will of one of the parties.

But, if it is difficult to find arbitrators to whom States will willingly commit their cause for decision, how much more difficult and delicate will it be to establish judges who will act without the consent of parties? The League, however, requires a tribunal which will not derive its origin from the consent of parties but will sit and adjudicate by virtue of its own inherent right, and will command obedience by its moral strength and material backing. How is this tribunal to be formed?

Most writers propose two tribunals, some three, some even four. Those who propose two suggest a Court to decide such matters as Municipal Courts decide, i.e. questions of law such as the construction of treaties or the application of established rules of International Law, and questions of fact such as whether the Russian fleet in the North Sea had been attacked by Japanese torpedoboats before it fired on the English fishing fleet. All other matters-questions of high policy, questions of national honour, and similar matters-they would leave to a Conference of the Powers party to the League.