interest in the _status quo_ and pursuing their common aims
at the expense of excluded nations in much the same spirit in which a
single nation now pursues its separate interest. Such a grouping of
interested nations is likely to be only temporary, as dissensions will
arise and new alignments be made comprising the nations formerly
excluded. It is bound to break up when the _status quo_ becomes
intolerable to several of its members. On the other hand the spirit of
such an organisation might not impossibly change. The league of
satisfied nations might discover that it was to its real interest, or
might be compelled by outer pressure, to make concessions to the
excluded nations, and finally to admit them on certain terms. Such a
development would be comparable to that by which autocracies have
gradually become constitutional monarchies and republics.

But, however the League is formed, two things are essential to its
continued existence. One is the acceptance of principles of
international regulation, tending to reduce the incentive and increase
the repugnance to war, in other words a measure of international
agreement, secured either by an international body having legislative
power, or in the beginning by a series of diplomatic arrangements as at
present. The second essential is a machinery for enforcing agreements.
Such machinery cannot be {242} dispensed with. Peace cannot come by
international machinery alone; neither can it come without machinery.

Peace between nations, like peace within a nation, does not depend upon
force alone. Unless the effective majority of the nations (or of the
citizens) are reconciled to the system to be enforced, unless they
desire peace, whether international or internal, the application of
force will be impossible. On the other hand, peace is equally
impossible without force. If no compulsion can be applied the smallest
minority can throw the world into war.

Such a compulsion of one nation by others does not necessarily mean a
bombardment of cities or the shedding of blood. The force to be
applied may be economic instead of military. No nation to-day, above
all, no great industrial nation, is socially and economically
self-sufficient, but all depend upon constant intercourse with other
nations. It is therefore true, as one writer says,[1] that "if all or
most of these avenues of intercourse were stopped, it (the offending
nation) would soon be reduced to worse straits t