of empire building. Those empires that exist
would fall naturally into their component parts. If those parts
remained affiliated with the central government, it would be only
through the voluntary choice of the majority of the population dwelling
upon the territory. Thus every people would be affiliated with the
government to which it naturally belonged and with which it wished to be
affiliated.

It would mean finally a voluntary federation of the nations, with the
establishment of a world court of justice; but no weak-kneed, spineless
arbitration court: rather a court of justice, comparable to those
established over individuals, whose judgments would be enforced by an
international military and naval police, contributed by the federated
nations.

People misunderstand this proposal. They imagine it would mean the
giving over of the entire military and naval equipment of each federated
nation to the central court. Far from it: each nation would retain, for
defense purposes, the mass of its manhood and the larger fraction of its
limited equipment, while a minor fraction would be contributed to the
world court.

When this is achieved there will be, for the first time in the history
of the world, the dawn of the longed-for era of universal and relatively
permanent peace for mankind.

It is a far-off dream, is it not? Let us admit it frankly, and it seems
further off than it did four years ago; for the approximations to it,
achieved through international law, we have seen go down in a blind
welter, through the invention of new instruments of destruction and the
willful perpetration of illegal and immoral atrocities in this horrible
War.

Nevertheless, it is not so far off as in ourdarker moments we fear. If
this world War ends justly; which means if it ends so that the people
dwelling on any territory are affiliated with the government to which
they naturally belong and with which they wish to be affiliated, the
dream will be brought appreciably nearer. If the War ends unjustly,
which means if it ends with the gratification of the ambitions of
aggressive tyranny, the dream will be put remotely far off. If a peace
is patched up meantime, with no solution, it will mean Europe sleeping
on its arms, and the breaking out of the war with multiplied devastation
within twenty years. That is why these blithely undertaken peace
missions and other efforts at peace without victory, even when not
cloaks for pro-German mo