continental Powers of the Entente as an adequate substitute for
certain territorial readjustments which they otherwise consider
essential to secure them from sudden attack.

"Whether such a condition would prevent future wars is a question that
only experience can answer. Personally, I am profoundly convinced, with
Mr. Taft, that a genuine league of nations must have teeth in the guise
of supernational, not international, forces. In these remarks I make
abstraction from the larger question which wholly absorbs this--namely,
whether the masses for whose behoof the lavish expenditure of time,
energy, and ingenuity is undertaken, will accept a coalition of
victorious governments against unregenerate peoples as a substitute for
the Society of Nations as at first conceived."

The supposed object of the League was the substitution of right for
force, by debarring each individual state from employing violence
against any of the others, and by the use of arbitration as a means of
settling disputes. This entails the suppression of the right to declare
war and to prepare for it, and, as a corollary, a system of deterrents
to hinder, and of penalties to punish rebellion on the part of a
community. That in those cases where the law is set at naught
efficacious means should be available to enforce it will hardly be
denied; but whether economic pressure would suffice in all cases is
doubtful. To me it seems that without a supernational army, under the
direct orders of the League, it might under conceivable circumstances
become impossible to uphold the decisions of the tribunal, and that, on
the other hand, the coexistence of such a military force with national
armaments would condemn the undertaking to failure.

An analysis of the Covenant lies beyond the limits of my task, but it
may not be amiss to point out a few of its inherent defects. One of the
principal organs of the League will be the Assembly and the Council. The
former, a very numerous and mainly political body, will necessarily be
out of touch with the peoples, their needs and their aspirations. It
will meet at most three or four times a year. And its members alone will
be invested with all the power, which they will be chary of delegating.
On the other hand, the Council, consisting at first of nine members,
will meet at least once a year. The members of both bodies will
presumably be appointed by the governments,[351] who will certainly not
renounce their sovereignty i