SECTION21.-PRECISE NATURE OF PROBLEM TO BE INVESTIGATED.^ 



signified by a League of Nations ? One could read for months 

 in the press leading articles, special articles, and cables on the 

 subject, without this fundamental question being asked. Roughly, 

 it might mean an agreement between the leading governments 

 of the world to defend each other if attacked. For the inner 

 circle a certain number of experts it was a project in- 

 volving an International Court whose object it was to inquire 

 into justiciable cases, and a Council which was to act as mediator, 

 conciliator, and legislator, and some kind of internationalised 

 army. On one point unanimity appeared to exist, namely that 

 a League of Nations would form an effective bulwark against 

 another attentat on humanity. Why this should follow, it was 

 difficult to comprehend. Yet if the precise- nature of the problem 

 had been determined, the discussions would have been distinctly 

 more profitable. Even the advisability of a League of Nations 

 in any form might have been called into question, and a new 

 issue would have been raised: for example, whether a Legislature, 

 Court, and Administration, with total absence of armaments, 

 was not what existed in intra-territorial affairs, and what should 

 be introduced into inter-territorial affairs? In any case un- 

 biassed reflection would have shown that there was no virtue in 

 a League as such; that a League might be a reactionary body; 

 that a Court restricted in its scope, and confined merely to 

 platonic expressions of opinion, would very likely prove abortive ; 

 that a Council of Conciliation, constituted of Government nominees, 

 was a travesty of a democratic institution; and that our age and 

 its spirit demanded nothing more nor less for international 

 affairs than for national ones a democratic Legislature, Court, 

 and Administration. As a minimum, thinkers ought to have 

 made proposals which were unambiguous, and not proceeded 

 to assume the clarity of an expression which was really vague 

 in the extreme. Now that the League with its Secretariat, 

 Council, and Assembly exists, the object of reformers should 

 be to develop it into the positive direction indicated above. 



Suppose, again, that the problem submitted is that of the 

 causes of peace and war. Here, unless the terms are properly 

 defined at the initial stage, the investigation may assume gigantic 

 proportions, and yet the results may only darken the issues 

 involved. As explained in 117 there is almost a universal 

 tendency to think of problems in the light of momentary and 

 local interests, and thus to mistake passing symptoms for 

 eternal verities. A state of war tends therefore to be defined in 

 certain extremist quarters as resulting from any and every kind 

 of social backwardness, and peace as only securable through 

 social conduct which is in every way irreproachable, whilst 

 other extremists reason that, e.g., wars have always been and 

 will for ever remain because demanded by human nature, a 

 period of peace being a transitional stage between one war 

 and another. Along this road advance is manifestly barred. 



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