Page:The League of Nations and the democratic idea.djvu/25

 will for certain join it. The hope is that the League will be so strong and general that to stand out of it will be a marked action. The Power that stands out will thereby be confessing that it means still, in spite of all that the world has suffered, to cleave to war and make its fortune by war. Let us hope there may be no such Power. But if there is, its existence will not wreck the whole League; it will perhaps bind it the more together, as law-abiding settlers stand together against a robber or pirate.

As to machinery, what is needed in the first place is probably a very simple thing: merely an adding together of the present arbitration treaties, so that the various nations which have separately agreed to arbitrate their differences shall form a League with mutual guarantees. At present if there are two nations bound by treaty to arbitrate and one chooses to break the treaty the offender suffers no penalty. He has only one enemy, and that an enemy of his own choosing. But if there are twelve nations the Offender has eleven enemies. Again, where there is a League of many Powers there is no danger, as there may be in a separate arbitration, of two arbitrating Powers settling their differences at the expense of a third. Still more important, such a League would be a permanent organ, always ready to act, and embodied in a permanent machinery. It would old Concert of Europe, have to be called into action at the last moment to deal with a trouble that