our operations as belligerents without passion and ourselves observe with proud punctilio the principles of right and of fair play we profess to be fighting for."

Finally there are carried into the camps and even to the fighting line, chiefly by means of the Y M C A and its parallel institutions named above, opportunities for recreation, rest, and education, some slight substitutes for and suggestion of the comforts and inspiration of club and home life in the home land.

All these splendid efforts to moralize and spiritualize the meaning, method, and purposes of the World War are the undoubted fruit of that spirit which the whole world knows and names as Christian.

5. In the next place the insistent demand is being made by the heart, the mind, and the conscience of mankind that this World War shall end in the complete reconstruction of international relations. Not merely because of the agonies and losses wrought by the war, but because of the revelation which it has given to us all of the causes from which war springs and their ethical disgrace, the human mind has set itself to the mightiest task known to history. This is nothing less than laying the secure foundations of a united humanity. Bluntschli, in the work so often cited, describes the "tendencies towards a common organization of

humanity." He said, it is true, that "the Aryan race feels itself called to manage the world," but that was more than forty years ago. Today he would not express it exactly so. Then follows this passage, which because of its authorship by a German who was yet undeflected from correct thinking by the influence of the newly-born Empire, is the more significant: "We have not yet got so far: at the present day it is not so much will and power that are wanting as spiritual maturity. The members of the European family of nations know their superiority over other nations well enough, but they have not yet come to a clear understanding among themselves and about themselves. A definite result is not possible until the enlightening word of knowledge has been uttered about this and about the nature of humanity, and until the nations are ready to hear it. Till then, the universal empire will be an idea after which many strive, which none can fulfil. But as an idea of the future the general theory of the State cannot overlook it. Only in the universal empire will the true human State be revealed, and in it international law will attain a higher form and an assured existence. To the universal empire the particular States are related, as the nations to humanity. Particular States are members of the universal empire and attain in it their completion and their full satisfaction. The "The Theory of the State," p. 31.

purpose of the universal State is not to break up particular states and oppress nations, but better to secure the peace of the former and the freedom of the latter." 3

It was in the same general period of unfettered German life that Dorner, the great theologian, in his famous work, "Christian Ethics," maintained, "that the ends for which the State exists cannot be reached by means of legal institutions which shall embrace the whole human race, that is, by one universal State, but can only be realized in a multiplicity of States, each possessing its own sovereign power."4 But this seems to be a decision due to purely verbal or technical considerations, for on a later page he seems to contradict it in substance, though not in form. "Those beginnings of international law which we see," he says, “make it possible for Christian nations to hope that one day Christian princes and Christian peoples will unite to form a high Areopagus, to which they will commit the task of settling their differences with each other, so that Christian blood will no longer have to be shed by Christian men.' But Treitschke was teaching at Berlin at the same time as Dorner. And Treitschke won.6

3 "The Theory of the State," pp. 31, 32.

4 Dorner, "Christian Ethics." Trans., p. 556.

5 Ibid., pp. 579, 580.

6 From Treitschke's victory arose the Kaiser's speeches, von Bernhardi's book, et id genus omne-and Belgium.

Nevertheless some progress was made even before the war in the direction of the World-State. Of this the years prolific of peace propaganda were witness. The Hague Conventions and Mr. Carnegie's Peace Palace, the very alignment of Europe in opposing leagues of great nations, and the formation of many associations to promote international understanding and concert of mind, were all forces acting in that general direction.

But the World War is the mightiest force. Already, in the intimate cooperation of the enemies of Germany, in their mutual good will, in their willingness to sacrifice for each other as no nation ever did before for another nation, in the mingling of the blood of their sons on the fields of France and Flanders, in the concentration of an international will upon the victory of nations that are equal brothers, free from each other's domination, but in holy bonds to each other's succour, we see far more than mere prophecies or faint beginnings of the universal State. The history of it has definitely begun. The leading nations of the world are cooperating to establish it. The overthrow of German militarism will not only sweep away the supreme obstacle, but will compel the more rapid fulfilment of the age-long dream of seers and saints. The League of Nations has already arisen, a new era in the moral development of humanity.

6. Another sphere in which the war has hastened

ethical progress must be referred to less at length than its importance demands. The war has compelled the democratic powers to reconstruct their industrial life. Indeed, it is the entire fabric of society that is being rapidly changed. Two of the most dignified, luminous, and far-reaching documents produced in the war are "Labor and the New Social Order," adopted by the British Labour Party, and "Labor War Aims," the agreement adopted by the Inter-Allied Labor and Social Conference in London, February, 1918.7

In these momentous utterances we discover the force and breadth of the changes which have come like a tidal wave upon the slowly unfolding internal history of the allied nations. The former document does not profess any abstract socialist program, nor do its proposals involve the doctrine of communism. Its fundamental principles are threefold: first, every worker by hand or brain must receive the full value of his labor, and the determination of this must not be left to the decision of any class of employers; second, the Government must take full control and retain the initiative as to education, adjustment of wages to changing economic conditions, etc.; third, the immediate nationalization of land, railways, mines, and the production of electrical power, must be arranged.

7 Both documents are published, the former in draft form, by The New Republic, New York.