national government, we broach a proposition less
revolutionary in substance than in sound. If all the separate treaties,
conventions, and other agreements, existing now between pairs of nations
for the performance of specific acts and the settlement of differences,
were modified and gathered into the forms of general treaties signed by
all the treaty-making states; if all international laws and usages were
codified and brought under the surveillance of some single
representative court or council,--we should discover that there existed
already the substance of an international government, not indeed
adequate to our needs, but far ampler than we had suspected. In the
Hague conventions and courts, again, and in certain other
intergovernmental instruments, such as the Postal and Telegraphic
Bureaux at Berne, we already possess the nucleus of the general forms
required. We possess already the beginnings alike of the legislative,
judicial, and administrative apparatus of international government. But
it is slight in substance, fragmentary in its application, and
exceedingly imperfect in its sanctions. Moreover, it has just shown
itself quite inadequate to perform the first function of a government,
viz. to keep the public peace.

The task of converting so feeble a structure of government into an
effective instrument of international peace and progress is evidently
one of great magnitude and difficulty. But it is the task which lies
persistently before us, and upon its performance the safety of
civilization itself depends. It is, therefore, well not to exaggerate
its difficulties, but to measure them as closely as we can. This can
best be done by means of a brief survey of the principal lines of
advance which have been proposed. In this country, in America, in
Holland, and elsewhere, the air is thickening with schemes for obtaining
better international relations after the war. All of them have this, I
think, in common, that they concern themselves primarily not with ideal
or practical plans for the general co-operation of nations in advancing
the welfare of the world, but with methods of preventing future wars and
securing relief against the burden of armaments. All agree that some
general formal arrangements between nations must be substituted for 'the
clash of competing ambitions, of groupings and alliances and a
precarious equipoise', and that only by such stable agreement can
disarmament be got and peace rendered secure.