urage, with high idealism tempered by sane facing
of the actual facts of life, have striven to bring nearer the day when
armed strife between nation and nation, between class and class, between
man and man shall end throughout the world. Because all this is true, it
is also true that there are no men more ignoble or more foolish, no men
whose actions are fraught with greater possibility of mischief to their
country and to mankind, than those who exalt unrighteous peace as better
than righteous war. The men who have stood highest in our history, as in
the history of all countries, are those who scorned injustice, who were
incapable of oppressing the weak, or of permitting their country, with
their consent, to oppress the weak, but who did not hesitate to draw
the sword when to leave it undrawn meant inability to arrest triumphant
wrong.

All this is so obvious that it ought not to be necessary to repeat it.
Yet every man in active affairs, who also reads about the past, grows
by bitter experience to realize that there are plenty of men, not only
among those who mean ill, but among those who mean well, who are ready
enough to praise what was done in the past, and yet are incapable of
profiting by it when faced by the needs of the present. During our
generation this seems to have been peculiarly the case among the men who
have become obsessed with the idea of obtaining universal peace by some
cheap patent panacea.

There has been a real and substantial growth in the feeling for
international responsibility and justice among the great civilized
nations during the past threescore or fourscore years. There has been a
real growth of recognition of the fact that moral turpitude is involved
in the wronging of one nation by another, and that in most cases war is
an evil method of settling international difficulties. But as yet
there has been only a rudimentary beginning of the development of
international tribunals of justice, and there has been no development at
all of any international police power. Now, as I have already said,
the whole fabric of municipal law, of law within each nation, rests
ultimately upon the judge and the policeman; and the complete absence
of the policeman, and the almost complete absence of the judge, in
international affairs, prevents there being as yet any real homology
between municipal and international law.

Moreover, the questions which sometimes involve nations in war are
far more difficult an