How to Establish Peace.

In many States peace has been secured and brotherhood established. The human race is far from perfection, but it is going ahead to a better and brighter social state than we have yet had in the world. Its march to this better goal will be hindered by social war, by an appeal to force and not to reason. Those who appeal to force show that they lack the feeling for brotherhood and do not trust the people. Peace in a State can exist only if there is a reverence for the laws we ourselves have made, and if the feeling for brotherhood prevails. How can we obtain peace between nations? Peace is the absence of war. How can nations avoid war? I believe there is only one way of avoiding war, and that is to create for nations what some nations have created for their own citizens. The dream of Auguste Comte was a United States of Europe. He proposed that Europe should be divided into small republics, and these republics confederated as the United States of America are confederated. To settle differences between the States there must be judicial tribunals, and behind these tribunals a Federal Standing Army just as behind the tribunals of a State there stand the policemen or the military to enforce the decrees of the courts. We have seen the uselessness of the Hague Tribunal. It has no power to enforce its decisions, and nations are not bound to appeal to it to settle their differences. It has no jurisdiction unless both disputants agreed to leave the matter to it to settle. And if they did, and a decision was given, the Hague Tribunal could not enforce its decision. It is only by the creation of international tribunals such as courts are in a nation, that peace can be established. There would then have to be an inter- page 8 national police or army, as a "sanction," as it is termed, behind the tribunal.