The answer is principle; the problem is the acceptability of its dispensation. This is the world's danger, because the difficulty here is sacrifice. Sacrifice of attitude; in other words, the capability of thinking internationally or co-operatively. We shall never do this singly, or even collectively, except on a common basis of law, such as is possible in a Declaration of Rights. And this will be the responsibility of the Peace Conference. It will have to establish itself not only as a Court of Judgment, but primarily as a Parliament of Man. Its main function will not be military, political, or economic, but social, that is, international. Here only principle can avail, and this will be the difficulty of the nations.

The indispensable condition of safety is the formulation in advance of the principles which are to govern all decisions, whether of empire or of nationhood, and already it is clear that far more precise and comprehensive definitions are required than those loosely accepted, because arbitrarily promoted, as a basis in the American fourteen points. If Europe is to attain to Mr. Wilson's impersonal justice, Europe must be called upon to cooperate fully and integrally, and America also must give proof of her will to sacrifice. One of the President's points refers to barrier tariffs, yet it is clear from the Republican attitude that America is by no means willing to co-operate in this important condition of a co-operative order, and if so, then Europe cannot be expected to respond. War may pass from a princely right to that of the god, Capital, and the next era may conceivably be controlled by the struggle for the natural resources of the world, which is, indeed, the great problem of Empire. If, for example, Europe, or a large part of it, is shut out by way of punishment or for so-called motives of "security" from a legitimate share in the products of life, then we shall have achieved little, certainly nothing that is permanent; nor will the right of war be either deflected or suppressed. Yet this is essentially a democratic question, and undoubtedly will be decided sooner or later internationally by democracy, the now articulate opinion of Europe unbound. As a result of the war, Europe will have for the first time a people's mandate, embracing in huge areas the women. A Peace Conference which acted contrary to this spirit of the old age could only bring about a temporary settlement, would sow the seeds of European revo

lution, would in the end salve but a phantom. At stake are the systems of militarism, capitalism, and imperialism, and they are largely interlocked. The demand is the principle of the right to live opportunity or co-operation, and in this demand the claims of the awakened soldiers and workers here and everywhere will ultimately prove decisive.

Again, our salvation lies in principle. To obtain it, Europe must be summoned to definitions and declarations of accepted governing principles for the solution of the many complex problems at issue, in which work there must obviously be two distinctive, though parallel, processes. The one, the settlement of war; the other, reconstruction.

What we have overthrown is the pyramid or monarchical state-henceforth Europe will move on horizontal, not on vertical, lines. And that politically, socially, and economically. The vertical state implied slavery, concentrated all power in the hands of the few, moved above the heads of the peoples egocentrically, in applied and antagonistic isolation. As a creed of isolation, for the purpose of appropriation. But with the demolition of the vertical order, power isolation, as formerly understood, will be no longer tolerated. In its causal action, the horizontal position is co-operative or utilitarian, the reverse of the system of competition, which again in the modern conditions of war and economics must assume some form of the vertical state, or authority, which conditions because itself it is the condition. Dynastically, this is no longer the case; our rulers will be wise to learn the lesson economically. A Peace Conference that sought to reimpose the vertical system of society, whether in the form of group or capitalist interest, would find itself at clash with the longitudinal forces of its parts, in a word, with its own dynamics. Europe, in short, cannot be constricted or reconstructed on vertical lines of competitive power system, because the spirit of the whole has become horizontally evened, at least in its corporate stratification of government, and this is a condition diametrically opposed to isolated antagonisms, whether of creed of country or advantage, because democracies move on principle, whereas kings move on system. We have then already the clay of the new order in the equation of popular government, which necessarily implies decentralisation, individualism, freedom, as we have the spirit of the new order out

of the accepted failure of the old spirit. Politicians, therefore, will seek at their peril to build pyramids of centralisation either for national or for group interests, because Europe has ceased to be a fortress of isolated antagonisms; she has in her disparate units of re-established nationhood dissolved into a socialisable whole. She has attained to the form and structure of a synthesis.

The type of mind which sees in the coming Conference merely a Board of Control to set up a police law of arbitration is not thinking beyond a twelve months' span, nor is this the road to Mr. Wilson's "family" of Europe. A family must have opportunities, or it will fight for them, must fight for them. There can be no family of nations unless each of the associate nations is unfettered, just as all or any rearrangement of the map calculated to penalise indefinitely one nation or group at the expense of another must inevitably lead to disharmony, and this applies equally to all strategic interest in the reshaping of boundaries.

The issue is New Europe-the Europe of free nationality, of opportunity, of co-operation, of the people. It is not an Utopia that we contemplate, for we already have an equalisation of form and attitude, it remains but to give them life; from beneath, through the community to the commonwealth.

Yet there is only one way to rebuild Europe constructively, with any hope, that is, of preventing future wars; it is by the security of principle in a World Charter of Rights. We did it nationally once, we can do it now internationally. The indispensable condition of success is sacrifice of attitude, and at once we are faced with the great stain on our civilisation-Ireland. It will be ridiculous for us to insist upon the moral geography of Jugo-Slavdom, for instance, if at home we have to employ Prussian methods of coercion towards Ireland, for that is the way to confusion. All problems of nationality and of interdependence must henceforth be decided by principle-or they will remain undecided. Similarly, America will be required to establish some equitable principle of adjustment covering the imperial problem of Japan, or that imperial problem will remain, rendering negatory all effort at a League of Nations. The dark problem of Africa is another morass. And there is the anomaly of our class war with Russia, which in itself is an outrage

against the first principles of nationality. There are not problems for politicians, who themselves have largely caused them. They can only be solved co-operatively by principle. They thus demand, as the precedent condition of the new order, the clash and friction of mind; in other words, if we are to do full work we must thrash out these problems publicly; we must collaborate by principle; we must have a Conference, as the executive of select assessory conferences, which shall confederate.

THE FOURTEEN POINTS AND THE
LEAGUE OF NATIONS 1

One has only to study the fourteen conditions of peace set forth by President Wilson in his speech of January 8 to be convinced of two things; in the first place, they primarily concern the conditions of a permanent peace rather than merely the conditions of peace with Germany at the present time; and secondly, they cannot be effectually realized in detail without the continuing support of an international organization which shall be administrative in character, and not merely judicial. The first consideration concerns us here only as it is bound up with the second. The future historian will point out the extraordinary detachment of President Wilson from exclusive preoccupation with immediate war issues. He will note that, while the articles from vii to xiii are concerned with territorial issues which grow immediately out of the alignments of the war, even these are framed within a statement of world issues which might (substituting the name of some other country for that of Russia in article vi) have been laid down at any time of peace in a discussion of fundamental guarantees of world peace. He will then observe that these specific war aims appear as illustrations of the general principles by means of matters which have been made urgent in the course of the war.

Looking in detail at the contents of the fourteen articles in their bearing on the question of the dominant character of a League of Nations, they will be found to run the gamut from those which absolutely require an international agency with leg

1 By John Dewey. In the Dial for November 30, 1918. p. 463.

islative and administrative powers to those which can be finally settled by the peace treaty itself. Intermediate are those which can formally be determined by the Peace Conference, but which require a permanent international body to insure that the formal settlement becomes an enduring actuality. A study of the fourteen conditions from this point of view will, I think, justify the following conclusion: there are but two matters which the peace treaty itself can finally adjust. These are the righting of the wrong done France in respect to Alsace-Lorraine, and the readjustment of the frontiers of Italy.

Next come the problems of restoration affecting all the territories invaded by the Central Powers. These would not of course demand a permanent international commission. But the work to be undertaken will certainly cover a period of years, and it will involve many points that cannot be completely covered in advance by any written agreement. If the work of restoration is to be done intelligently and in a way which will not leave behind it disputes and sore points, it will require mixed commissions involving the cooperation of statesmen, economists, physicians, engineers and technicians of all sorts. Since not all questions which will arise can be treated as mere matters of practical detail, the deliberations of these commissions will have to be supervised by some kind of international council.

Trenching more directly upon the issue of a permanent international government is the matter of international covenants and guarantees. These are specifically mentioned in the case of the Balkan States, the Dardanelles, and the new independent Polish State. They are certainly directly implied in the reduction of armaments, and in cooperation to secure for Russia an "unhampered and unembarrassed opportunity," to say nothing of "assistance of every kind that she may need and may herself desire." For convenience and brevity of discussion, these concerns may be summed up in the problems of nationality and of restoration of order compatible with freedom in eastern and southeastern Europe.

Nothing has brought international relations into greater disrepute from the standpoint of law than the tendency to write certain guarantees into treaties of peace and then fail to furnish any methods for making these "guarantees" effectual. In part this is due to the Pickwickian piety which, when "serious" matters