Force, a human Niagara, wild from the beginning, now controlled and
directed by a higher law. Imagine the modern courts of our cities and
states without the backing of organized force--courts and judges and
rules of judicial procedure with no force to support them, and each
individual in the community vested with the option in case of a dispute
with a neighbour to settle that dispute by attacking the neighbour! We
should have anarchy within six months.

What about nations? What has the spirit seen there? For nations are
merely large collections of individuals. The same law of evolution
governs both.

The first and primitive method of settling disputes between nations, and
for a long time the only one, was war; and this the spirit beheld. Then
gradually evolved the method of voluntary submission to a judicial
tribunal such as the tribunal now existing at The Hague, each nation
retaining, however, its right of trial by battle. The next method, the
vision of the future, the new internationalism of which the living
Lafayette was the symbol, is the harnessing of the united force of the
peoples of the world, the union of the democracies to enforce the peace
of the world. It is a vision of the union to form a modern court backed
by force trained to obey the higher law, backed by force sufficient to
compel nations to settle their disputes in court instead of by
fighting. It is a vision of the war ogre, who has for centuries ravaged
the world, at last shackled and bound; of the monster who with bloody
claws and fangs has torn, ripped, and murdered his victims by the
million, at last overcome; a vision of this evil brute of war conquered,
and of primeval force trained, civilized, and forging the chains to hold
this devil of hell.

XVII

Did that Indian warrior who met Lafayette in the American wilderness
speak more wisely than he knew? Were the footsteps of this soldier of
France directed by the Great Spirit? Who can tell!

This must be the last war. We shall not hand down to our children this
heritage of calamity. Our Revolutionary War settled for all time the
independence of these United States of America. The Civil War settled
for all time the question of slavery in this hemisphere. This war must
and shall settle for all time the question of military autocratic
domination of the world. "The time has come to conquer or submit."

And if after we have checked and curbed this natural foe to liberty
there shall ari