ts essential
necessity. In the first two cases the League of Free Nations will be a
world league including Germany as a principal partner, in the latter
case the League of Free Nations will be a defensive league standing
steadfast against the threat of a world imperialism, and watching and
restraining with one common will the homicidal maniac in its midst. But
in all these cases there can be no great alleviation of the evils that
now blacken and threaten to ruin human life altogether, unless all the
civilized and peace-seeking peoples of the world are pledged and locked
together under a common law and a common world policy. There must rather
be an intensification of these evils. There must be wars more evil than
this war continuing this war, and more destructive of civilized life.
There can be no peace and hope for our race but an organized peace and
hope, armed against disturbance as a state is armed against mad,
ferocious, and criminal men.

Now, there are two chief arguments, running one into the other, for the
necessity of merging our existing sovereignties into a greater and, if
possible, a world-wide league. The first is the present geographical
impossibility of nearly all the existing European states and empires;
and the second is the steadily increasing disproportion between the
tortures and destructions inflicted by modern warfare and any possible
advantages that may arise from it. Underlying both arguments is the fact
that modern developments of mechanical science have brought the nations
of Europe together into too close a proximity. This present war, more
than anything else, is a violent struggle between old political ideas
and new antagonistic conditions.

It is the unhappy usage of our schools and universities to study the
history of mankind only during periods of mechanical unprogressiveness.
The historical ideas of Europe range between the time when the Greeks
were going about the world on foot or horseback or in galleys or sailing
ships to the days when Napoleon, Wellington, and Nelson were going about
at very much the same pace in much the same vehicles and vessels. At the
advent of steam and electricity the muse of history holds her nose and
shuts her eyes. Science will study and get the better of a modern
disease, as, for example, sleeping sickness, in spite of the fact that
it has no classical standing; but our history schools would be shocked
at the bare idea of studying the effect of modern means