brought to the decisions
which alone can give securities for lasting peace against Germany on the
one hand and Russia on the other, or to either of these nations, or can
give security for the future to any of the smaller nations of
Continental Europe. There can, indeed, be no security for future peace
in Europe until every European nation recognizes the fact that there is
to be no such thing in the world as one dominating nation--no such thing
as world empire for any single nation--Great Britain, Germany, Russia,
Japan, or China. There can be no sense of security against sudden
invasion in Europe so long as all the able-bodied men are trained to be
soldiers and the best possible armies are kept constantly ready for
instant use. There can be no secure peace in Europe until a federation
of the European States is established, capable of making public
contracts intended to be kept, and backed by an overwhelming
international force subject to the orders of an international tribunal.
The present convulsion demonstrates the impotence toward permanent
peace of secret negotiations, of unpublished agreements, of treaties and
covenants that can be broken on grounds of military necessity, of
international law if without sanctions, of pious wishes, of economic and
biological predictions, and of public opinion unless expressed through a
firm international agreement, behind which stands an international
force. When that international force has been firmly established it will
be time to consider what proportionate reductions in national armaments
can be prudently recommended. Until that glorious day dawns, no patriot
and no lover of his kind can wisely advocate either peace in Europe or
any reduction of armaments.

The hate-breeding and worse than brutal cruelties and devastations of
the war, with their inevitable moral and physical degradations, ought to
shock mankind into attempting a great step forward. Europe and America
should undertake to exterminate the real causes of the catastrophe. In
studying that problem the coming European conference can profit by the
experience of the three prosperous and valid countries in which public
liberty and the principle of federation have been most successfully
developed--Switzerland, Great Britain, and the United States.
Switzerland is a democratic federation which unites in a firm federal
bond three different racial stocks speaking three unlike languages, and
divided locally and irregularly bet