xistence above the several States which could compel them to bring
their disputes before an International Court and also compel them to
carry out the judgments of such a Court. For this reason many Pacifists
aim at such an organisation of the Community of States as would bring
all the civilised States of the world within the bonds of a federation.
They demand a World Federation of all the civilised States, or at any
rate a federation of the States of Europe, on the model of the United
States of America.

If such a Federal World State were practically possible, there would be
no objection to it, although International Law as such would cease to
exist and be replaced by the Constitutional Law of this Federal World
State. But in my first lecture I pointed out that such a Federal World
State is practically impossible. And it is not even desirable.

The development of mankind would seem in the main to be indissolubly
connected with the national development of the peoples. Most peoples
possessing a strong national consciousness desire an independent State
in which they can live according to their own ideals. They want to be
their own masters, and not to be part and parcel of a Federal World
State to which they would have to surrender a great part of their
independence. Moreover--as I likewise pointed out in my first lecture
(pp. 18-20)--it would be impossible to establish a strong Government and
a strong Parliament in a Federal World State.

However this may be, it is not at all certain that war would altogether
disappear in a Federal World State. The history of Federal States
teaches that wars do occasionally break out between their member States.
Think of the war between the Roman Catholic and the Protestant member
States of the Swiss Confederation in 1847, of the war in 1863 between
the Northern and the Southern member States within the Federation which
is called the United States of America, and of the war between Prussia
and Austria within the German Confederation in 1866.

IV. But what kind of organisation of the League of Nations is possible
if we reject the idea of a Federal State?

Neither I, nor anyone else who does not like to build castles in the
air, can answer this question directly by making a detailed proposal. It
is at present quite impossible to work out a practical scheme according
to which a more detailed organisation of the League of Nations could be
realised. But so much is certain that every attempt