matter.

And now let us consider what are the powers that must be delegated to
this proposed council of a League of Free Nations, if that is really
effectually to prevent war and to organize and establish and make peace
permanent in the world.

Firstly, then, it must be able to adjudicate upon all international
disputes whatever. Its first function must clearly be that. Before a war
can break out there must be the possibility of a world decision upon its
rights and wrongs. The League, therefore, will have as its primary
function to maintain a Supreme Court, whose decisions will be final,
before which every sovereign power may appear as plaintiff against any
other sovereign power or group of powers. The plea, I take it, will
always be in the form that the defendant power or powers is engaged in
proceedings "calculated to lead to a breach of the peace," and calling
upon the League for an injunction against such proceedings. I suppose
the proceedings that can be brought into court in this way fall under
such headings as these that follow; restraint of trade by injurious
tariffs or suchlike differentiations or by interference with through
traffic, improper treatment of the subjects _or their property_ (here I
put a query) of the plaintiff nation in the defendant state, aggressive
military or naval preparation, disorder spreading over the frontier,
trespass (as, for instance, by airships), propaganda of disorder,
espionage, permitting the organization of injurious activities, such as
raids or piracy. Clearly all such actions must come within the purview
of any world-supreme court organized to prevent war. But in addition
there is a more doubtful and delicate class of case, arising out of the
discontent of patches of one race or religion in the dominions of
another. How far may the supreme court of the world attend to grievances
between subject and sovereign?

Such cases are highly probable, and no large, vague propositions about
the "self-determination" of peoples can meet all the cases. In
Macedonia, for instance, there is a jumble of Albanian, Serbian,
Bulgarian, Greek and Rumanian villages always jostling one another and
maintaining an intense irritation between the kindred nations close at
hand. And quite a large number of areas and cities in the world, it has
to be remembered, are not homogeneous at all. Will the great nations of
the world have the self-abnegation to permit a scattered subject
population to appeal ag