ld be necessary to respect their scruples,
and to rely upon the softening influence of the moratorium and informed
public opinion to render a final recourse to arms unlikely among
civilized States. But, in considering the measure of security thus
achieved, we must remember that we must look to the weakest link in the
chain of the alliance, and ask ourselves how far the plan of
conciliation represented in the recent treaties between the United
States and several friendly European nations can be considered equally
secure in dealing with Germany, Russia, or Japan. If our international
arrangement is to dispense with all forcible pressure in the last
resort, and to rely upon purely moral pressure, it seems evident that
the validity of the arrangement depends upon the degree of confidence
which other States will entertain as to the bona fides and pacific
disposition of the least scrupulous of the powerful signatory States.
For if the opinion held of any one or two powerful States is that under
the stimulus of greed or ambition they would be likely, in defiance of
an award or of the public opinion of other States, to enforce their will
upon some weaker neighbour, such an opinion will keep alive so strong a
feeling of insecurity that no considerable reduction of military
preparations will be possible.

In assessing the early value of all proposals for better international
relations, the best practical test is afforded by the question, 'Will
the proposal lead nations to reduce their armaments?' For it will be
admitted that any settlement or international agreement, which leaves
the claims of militarism and navalism upon the vital and financial
resources of the several nations unimpaired, affords little hope of a
pacific future. A return to the era of competing armaments will destroy
the moral strength of any formal international agreements, however
specious. The importance of this consideration has led many to insist
that an explicit agreement for proportional disarmament should take a
prominent place in any settlement. This proposal, however, seems to me
defective in that it presumes in all or some of the nations a
persistence of the motives which have hitherto led them to strengthen
their fighting forces. Now the primary object of such international
arrangements as we are discussing, is to bring about a state of things
in which the past motives to arm will weaken and tend to disappear. If
nations, actuated either by arrogance