f vital interest
therefore are in truth non-justiciable. No powerful nation will accept
a subordinate position in the world because some arbitral body decides
it may not adopt a certain policy. Arbitration is not a process of
adjustment of growing nations to a changing environment.

But if nations will not gladly accept arbitration where supposedly
vital interests are concerned, can they not be coerced? Out of the
obvious need of such coercion arises a whole series of plans to force
recalcitrant nations to accept mediation, to delay hostilities and even
to abide by the arbitral award. A League to Enforce Peace is a
proposed union of pacific nations to prevent immediate or even {227}
ultimate recourse to war, to force combatants to arbitrate justiciable
disputes and to place the sanction of force behind the decisions of the
nations.

This proposal contains within it an element valuable and indeed
essential to international peace. It frankly assumes the right of a
group of nations to compel a refractory nation by the use of force. It
is far more realistic than the conception of a world peace based upon a
sudden conversion of the nations to the iniquity of war, which is at
bottom an anarchistic conception. For however we deplore a use of
force we cannot rely exclusively upon anything less. Force is not
intrinsically immoral, and without force no morality can prevail. The
compulsion which the parent exercises over a child, and organised
communities over the individual citizen, must equally form the basis of
an international system. One cannot base such a system upon mere moral
suasion, which, though of value as a precedent and complement to force,
is frequently thwarted by the public opinion of each nation, formed
within its borders and protected from outside influence by pride and a
blinding national interest. Outside nations could not have persuaded
Germany that it was unethical to invade Belgium. She would have
appealed to her own moral sense and trusted to the future to make good
her right to attack. Had Germany realised, however, that an invasion
of Belgium would be actively resisted by otherwise neutral nations,
overwhelming in force, she might have been willing to debate the
question.

The immorality of force lies merely in improper use. All through
history compulsion has been exerted for evil as well as for good
purposes. The future of international concord lies, therefore, not in
refraining from