s (Les Projets de l'Abbe de Saint-Pierre, 1900) he was not a mere
visionary Utopian, but an acute and far-seeing thinker, practical in his
methods, a close observer, an experimentalist, and one of the first to
attempt the employment of statistics. He was secretary to the French
plenipotentiaries who negotiated the Treaty of Utrecht, and was thus
probably put on the track of his scheme. He proposed that the various
European states should name plenipotentiaries to form a permanent
tribunal of compulsory arbitration for the settlement of all
differences. If any state took up arms against one of the allies, the
whole confederation would conjointly enter the field, at their conjoint
expense, against the offending state. He was opposed to absolute
disarmament, an army being necessary to ensure peace, but it must be a
joint army composed of contingents from each Power in the confederation.
Saint-Pierre, it will be seen, had clearly grasped the essential facts
of the situation as we see them to-day. "The author of The Project of
Perpetual Peace" concludes Prof. Pierre Robert in a sympathetic summary
of his career (Petit de Julleville, Histoire de la Langue et de la
Litterature Francaise, Vol. VI), "is the precursor of the twentieth
century." His statue, we cannot doubt, will be a conspicuous object,
beside Sully's, on the future Palace of any international tribunal.

[234] 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 the disputes between
national communities of individuals can by no means suppress conflict;
but unless it suppresses fighting, and unless it ensures that if
fighting occurs the aggressor shall not profit by his aggression, it
will have effected nothing.

[235] A.L. Guerard, "Impressions of Military Life in France," _Popular
Science Monthly_, April, 1911.

XI

THE PROBLEM OF AN INTERNATIONAL LANGUAGE

Early Attempts to Construct an International Language--The Urgent