the disputes of individuals, has
force behind it, and the law that is to settle the disputes between
nations cannot possibly be effective unless it has behind it a mighty
force. I have assumed this from the outset in quoting the dictum of
Hobbes, but the point seems to be so easily overlooked by the loose
thinker that it is necessary to reiterate it. The necessity of force
behind the law ordering international relations has, indeed, never been
disputed by any sagacious person who has occupied himself with the
matter. Even William Penn, who, though a Quaker, was a practical man of
affairs, when in 1693 he put forward his _Essay Towards the Present and
Future Peace of Europe by the Establishment of a European Diet,
Parliament or Estate_, proposed that if any imperial state refused to
submit its pretensions to the sovereign assembly and to abide by its
decisions, or took up arms on its own behalf, "all the other
sovereignties, united as one strength, shall compel the submission and
performance of the sentence, with damages to the suffering party, and
charges to the sovereignties that obliged their submission." In
repudiating some injudicious and hazardous pacificist considerations put
forth by Novikov, the distinguished French philosopher, Jules de
Gaultier, points out that law has no rights against war save in force,
on which war itself bases its rights. "Force _in abstracto_ creates
right. It is quite unimaginable that a right should exist which has not
been affirmed at some moment as a reality, that is to say a force....
What we glorify under the name of right is only a more intense and
habitual state of force which we oppose to a less frequent form of
force."[234] The old Quaker and the modern philosopher are thus at one
with the practical man in rejecting any form of pacification which rests
on a mere appeal to reason and justice.

[1] Jules de Gaultier, "Comment Naissent les Dogmes," _Mercure de
France_, 1st Sept., 1911. Jules de Gaultier also observes that "conflict
is the law and condition of all existence." That may be admitted, but it
ceases to be true if we assume, as the same thinker assumes, that
"conflict" necessarily involves "war." The establishment of law to
regulate the disputes between individuals by no means suppresses
conflict, but it suppresses fighting, and it ensures that if any
fighting occur the aggressor shall not profit by his aggression. In the
same way the existence of a tribunal to regulate