st organ of the
Federation.

A third scheme was that of _Sully_, adopted by Henri IV of France,
which, in 1603, proposed the division of Europe into fifteen States and
the linking together of these into a Federation with a General Council
as its highest organ.

And a fourth scheme was that of _Emeric Crucee_, who, in 1623, proposed
the establishment of a Union consisting not only of the Christian States
but of all States of the world, with a General Council seated at Venice.

And since that time many other schemes of similar kind have made their
appearance, the enumeration and discussion of which is outside our
present purpose. So much is certain that all these schemes were Utopian.
Nevertheless, a League of Nations having once come into existence,
International Law grew more and more, and when in 1625 Hugo Grotius
published his immortal work on 'The Law of War and Peace,' the system of
International Law offered in his work conquered the world and became the
basis of all following development.

V. However, although a League of Nations must be said to have been in
existence for about 400 years, because no International Law would have
been possible without it, this League of Nations could not, and was not
intended to, prevent war between its members. I say: it could not
prevent war. Why not? It could not prevent war on account of the
conditions which prevailed within the international society from the
Middle Ages till, say, the outbreak of the present war. These conditions
are intimately connected with the growth of the several States of
Europe.

Whereas the family, the tribe, and the race are natural products, the
nation as well as the State are products of historical development. All
nations are blends of more or less different races, and all States were
originally founded on force: strong rulers subjected neighbouring tribes
and peoples to their sway and thus formed coherent nations. Most of the
States in Europe are the product of the activity of strong dynasties
which through war and conquest, and through marriage and purchase,
united under one sovereign the lands which form the States and the
peoples which form the nations. Up to the time of the French Revolution,
throughout the sixteenth, seventeenth, and eighteenth centuries, all
wars were either wars of religion, or dynastic wars fought for the
increase of the territory under the sway of the dynasties concerned, or
so-called colonial wars fought for the acqu