ality which is the prerequisite of abiding success
in the efficacious settlement of international disputes. The United States
of America, its begetter, has repudiated it, and is still holding aloof,
while Germany and Japan, who ranked among its most powerful supporters,
have abandoned its cause and withdrawn from its membership. The decisions
arrived at and the action thus far taken, others will maintain, should be
regarded as no more than a magnificent gesture, rather than a conclusive
evidence of international solidarity. Still others may contend that though
such a verdict has been pronounced, and such pledges been given,
collective action must, in the end, fail in its ultimate purpose, and that
the League itself will perish and be submerged by the flood of
tribulations destined to overtake the whole race. Be that as it may, the
significance of the steps already taken cannot be ignored. Whatever the
present status of the League or the outcome of its historic verdict,
whatever the trials and reverses which, in the immediate future, it may
have to face and sustain, the fact must be recognized that so important a
decision marks one of the most distinctive milestones on the long and
arduous road that must lead it to its goal, the stage at which the oneness
of the whole body of nations will be made the ruling principle of
international life.

This historic step, however, is but a faint glimmer in the darkness that
envelops an agitated humanity. It may well prove to be no more than a mere
flash, a fugitive gleam, in the midst of an ever-deepening confusion. The
process of disintegration must inexorably continue, and its corrosive
influence must penetrate deeper and deeper into the very core of a
crumbling age. Much suffering will still be required ere the contending
nations, creeds, classes and races of mankind are fused in the crucible of
universal affliction, and are forged by the fires of a fierce ordeal into
one organic commonwealth, one vast, unified, and harmoniously functioning
system. Adversities unimaginably appalling, undreamed of crises and
upheavals, war, famine, and pestilence, might well combine to engrave in
the soul of an unheeding generation those truths and principles which it
has disdained to recognize and follow. A paralysis more painful than any
it has yet experienced must creep over and further afflict the fabric of a
broken society ere it can be rebuilt and regenerated.

"The civilization," writes Bah