Page:The League of Nations and the coming rule of law.djvu/7

 of nations, unless Germany is to be the head of it (for that is what their official utterances indicate), is to be counted on. The only kind of partnership we ask for or can accept is one in which no single Power may be dominant. In the least favourable event a reinforced and regularly organized league, based on the present military union of the Western Powers and excluding the Central Powers, would in all ways be a great step in advance, and far more effectual for restraining future aggression than unorganized alliance or understandings. Doubtless the ideal is a League embracing a morally transformed Germany and a group of East European States differing in both moral and material aspects from the moribund Austro-Hungarian Empire. But meanwhile the League need not command the military power of the whole world. Enough for our day if it wields so much warlike strength, and so well organized, as to make defiance of it manifestly unpromising. Thus much for the preliminary conditions. If any one thinks they can be dispensed with or circumvented, I must respectfully differ.

How, then, shall the League of Nations be organized? Obviously by solemn express convention, a convention whose binding force must depend on the renouncement by every party to it, in some measure, of independent sovereign power, and in particular of the right to be judge in one's own cause. For the plan of merely persuasive authority, which any party may obey or