forward, and I have, therefore, for the most part confined myself to propositions which are applicable to those schemes. They will be

found at the end of this volume. Where I have departed from this rule and have made observations applicable to the proposals of some only of the advocates of a League, I have tried to make this clear.

This little book makes no pretensions either to learning or to originality. It is, however, I hope, as clear and simple as is possible in view of the difficulty of a subject which is confounded by much abstract speculation and divergent practice; and attains, I hope, such substantial accuracy as is consistent with that clarity and simplicity at which I have aimed. Had I not been sometimes dogmatic when dogmatism was perhaps not justified and had I for the sake of formal accuracy qualified every statement made, the book would have been so overloaded with detail that my object would have been defeated. If any reader, who has not previously made a study of this subject, becomes as a result of reading it a little clearer in his ideas my purpose will have been attained.

I am greatly indebted to Mr. H. N. Spalding for the suggestions he made when the book was in manuscript; and to Dr. Hazel, of Jesus College, and Mr. A. J. Jenkinson, and Mr. R. W. Jeffery, of Brasenose College, for reading the proofs, the more so as they found time to do me this kindness whilst heavily engaged in labours directed to making possible the League of Nations by the triumph of our arms in the field.

OXFORD,

October 1st, 1918.

A SOCIETY OF STATES

OR

Sovereignty, Independence and Equality in a League of Nations

INTRODUCTORY:

THE THREE ALTERNATIVES

WORLD-DOMINION: THE SOVEREIGN INDEPENDENT STATE: THE LEAGUE OF NATIONS

POLITICAL Communities may regulate their relations to each other under any one of three possible systems. Two of these have been tried and have been found wanting; the third is now under the consideration of a distraught civilization.

The Middle Ages were dominated by the conception of a common superior before whose will States were to bow, whose commands they were to obey, and whose decisions upon differ

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In

ences between them they were to accept. That common superior Europe found first in the Roman Emperor, later in the Pope. the Middle Ages from 1000 A.D. to 1500 A.D. the idea of right was the leading idea of statesmen; the period is characterized by the continued existence of small States; and medieval wars were as a rule wars of rights. But it must not be forgotten that the imperial idea was, as Stubbs says, "but a small influence compared with the superstructure of right, inheritance and suzerainty that legal instincts and a general acquiescence in legal forms had raised upon it." In the course of time quarrels, corruption, and obscurantism on the one side, a growing sense of nationality and a growing desire for freedom on the other, brought to an end such law and order as the Imperial and Papal supremacy secured.

After the Reformation came a new conception of the relation in which political communities stand to each other. We pass from a period in which the dominating influence is right to a period in which the dominating in

1 Lectures on Medieval and Modern History, lect. ix., p. 246.