278 BALCH— INTERNATIONAL QUESTIONS 



able period of historic time over practically the whole known world, 

 and for that period of time extended the benefits of the Pax Romana 

 to the many kinds of peoples living within the frontiers of the empire. 

 The Roman law did much to bring peace to the world. But the 

 Pax Romana was extended, it must not be forgotten, by force of 

 arms and was maintained only so long as the Roman legions were 

 able to uphold the power of the empire and prevent the barbarians of 

 the outside unknown world from breaking through the Roman 

 frontiers. And when that force of arms ultimately was no longer 

 sufficient to restrain the rising tide of humanity outside of the 

 empire, the Roman law was swept away with the fabric of the empire 

 and in its place for several centuries chaos reigned. 



The conquest of the world, however, by one power as a means 

 of obtaining peace among the nations, is asking all nations, con- 

 queror and conquered alike, to pay a high price. In our own period 

 of civilization persistent efforts have been made to find some other 

 way to do away with the arbitrament of war between nations. And 

 the most generally talked of way in recent years of eradicating war 

 from human affairs seems to be the formation of a world federation. 

 The thought of the formation of a world state superimposed on the 

 present members of the family of nations is not at all a new idea, 

 though some of those who to-day are pressing it forward as the 

 magic wand which will free a suffering world from the dread and 

 cost of future war when the present conflagration has burnt itself 

 out, seem in perfect good faith to believe that it is an idea developed 

 in our own day and generation. That this is not so can be easily 

 seen by any one who will look up what Henry Quatre and the Due 

 de Sully, Cruce, Penn, the Abbe Saint Pierre, Kant, Lorimer, and 

 other publicists have said on that subject. 



As far back as the year 1623, indeed, fimeric Cruce, a French- 

 man, propounded in an embryonic form a league to enforce peace by 

 assembling at Venice a congress of ambassadors to sit permanently 

 with the mission of settling cases of difference between sovereigns 

 and with the backing of the combined forces of all the powers repre- 

 sented.^ This was really a forerunner of the movement to develop 



9 Thomas Willing Balcli, " Le Nouveau Cynee de fimeric Cruce," Paris, 

 1623, Philadelphia, 1909, page loi, et seq. 



