th the study
of those who seek at The Hague to obtain the same results on a world
scale.

In the third place, something should be done as soon as possible to
check the growth of armaments, especially naval armaments, by
international agreement. No one Power could or should act by itself;
for it is eminently undesirable, from the standpoint of the peace of
righteousness, that a Power which really does believe in peace should
place itself at the mercy of some rival which may at bottom have no
such belief and no intention of acting on it. But, granted sincerity
of purpose, the great Powers of the world should find no
insurmountable difficulty in reaching an agreement which would put an
end to the present costly and growing extravagance of expenditure on
naval armaments. An agreement merely to limit the size of ships would
have been very useful a few years ago, and would still be of use; but
the agreement should go much further.

Finally, it would be a master stroke if those great Powers honestly
bent on peace would form a League of Peace, not only to keep the peace
among themselves, but to prevent, by force if necessary, its being
broken by others. The supreme difficulty in connection with developing
the peace work of The Hague arises from the lack of any executive
power, of any police power, to enforce the decrees of the court. In
any community of any size the authority of the courts rests upon
actual or potential force; on the existence of a police, or on the
knowledge that the able-bodied men of the country are both ready and
willing to see that the decrees of judicial and legislative bodies are
put into effect. In new and wild communities where there is violence,
an honest man must protect himself; and until other means of securing
his safety are devised, it is both foolish and wicked to persuade him
to surrender his arms while the men who are dangerous to the community
retain theirs. He should not renounce the right to protect himself by
his own efforts until the community is so organized that it can
effectively relieve the individual of the duty of putting down
violence. So it is with nations. Each nation must keep well prepared
to defend itself until the establishment of some form of international
police power, competent and willing to prevent violence as between
nations. As things are now, such power to command peace throughout the
world could best be assured by some combination between those great
nations which