Page:"The next war"; an appeal to common sense (IA thenextwarappeal01irwi).pdf/180

 laws to define and forbid national murder and national burglary, and agree to punish, with their collective force, any violator of that law.

The punishment need not wholly, need not mainly, consist in physical force. The discussions preceding the League of Nations showed, theoretically at least, that a general economic boycott might be as effective as military action. This follows a rule of progress in human society. Once, law knew only one kind of penalty for crime—physical action. The criminal was killed or mutilated or flogged. In the eighteenth century, the English would hang a man for stealing six shillings. We have done away with flogging and mutilation, have abolished hanging except for the gravest crimes. We have substituted imprisonment and fine. Think it out and you will see that imprisonment is mostly an economic penalty, as a fine is wholly an economic penalty.

This book, I repeat, is not a plea for or against the existing League of Nations. Call your organization a League of Nations, an association of nations, a Hague Tribunal “with teeth in it”—call it what you will, organize it how you will. This is the specific for the disease of war. But while we wait for this inevitable organization to form and to become effective, we may use a few pain-killers and poultices.

Among these, the most important is disarmament—a pressing, vital question of the moment. Behind the present agitation lies a compelling economic