society
_on the model of a state_, or is founded on an untenable conception of
the idea of sovereignty. If the compression of the whole world into the
form of a single state were attained, the states of the day would
certainly lose their sovereignty and be degraded into provinces. On the
other hand, however, the sovereignty of the members of the international
society just as little excludes its organization as the fact of the
existence of this society excludes the sovereignty of its members.
Sovereignty as the highest earthly authority, which owes allegiance to
no other power, does not exclude the possibility that the sovereign
should subject himself to a self-imposed order, so long as this order
does not place him under any higher earthly power. All members of the
international society thus subject themselves in point of fact to the
law of nations without suffering the least diminution of their
sovereignty. But of course, for him to whom sovereignty is equivalent to
unrestrained power and unlimited arbitrariness of conduct, there cannot
be any international law at all, any more than any constitutional law,
seeing that international and constitutional law are opposed to absolute
arbitrariness, even though they recognize that a sovereign state is the
highest earthly authority.

[Sidenote: The pacificist ideal of an organization of the family of
nations.]

17. Hitherto, the demand for an organization of the international
society has always issued from the pacificist party, in order to render
the suppression of war possible. In the struggle round the pacificist
ideal the chief objection has always been the absence of any judicial
authority over states, and of any supreme executive power, able to
compel, in a dispute between states, the execution of a judicial decree.
Accordingly it has been the aim of the pacificists to obtain an
organization of the international society, such as would compress the
whole world, or at least whole parts of the world, such as Europe and
America, into the form of a federal state or a system of confederated
states. The belief is that only in this way can war be got rid of as a
mode of settling disputes between states, and thereby the
ever-increasing demands of naval and military budgets be avoided.

[Sidenote: The world-state is not desirable.]

18. Whatever else can be urged against a universal federal state and the
like, it is at the present day no longer a physical impossibility.
Di