276 



MARCUS N. TOBj ON INTERNATIONAL 



ancient experience, the records of ancient experiments, are in 

 danger of being forgotten. Only five years ago, in the Romanes 

 Lecture delivered before the University of Oxford, the 

 Chancellor of the University, himself a great scholar and an 

 administrator of wide experience, said : — 



" The earliest instance of a frontier commission that I have eome 

 across is that of the Commission of six English and Scotch 

 representatives, who were appointed in 1222 to mark the limits of 

 the two kingdoms, and it is symptomatic of the contemporary 

 attitude about frontiers that it broke down directly it set to work, 

 leaving behind it what became a Debatable Land and a battle- 

 ground of deadl}^ strife for centuries." 



and again, referring to the settlement of boundary disputes by 

 arbitration, he said : — 



" This method is the exclusive creation of the last half-century 

 or less, and its scope and potentialities are as yet in embryo.' 



How mistaken such conceptions are I hope to make clear to 

 you in this paper. 



I shall not overstep the bounds of history and trespass on the 

 sphere of philosophy by any discussion of the fundamental 

 questions of the ethical significance or the moral justification 

 of war. Whatever be our answers to those questions, we shall 

 agree that war, one of the most striking facts of human history, 

 deserves the most careful attention of the philosopher and 

 the economist, it demands the thought of all who are interested 

 in the moral and material well-being of the race, — a class which 

 includes, or at least should include, every Christian. But a 

 purely philosophical and abstract presentation of a case is apt 

 to leave the ordinary man unconvinced, not to say suspicious. 

 Ideals are, no doubt, excellent things in their way, but he prides 

 himself upon being a practical man ; his appeal is not to logic, 

 but to experience. For him, as for all of us, war is a thing 

 inconceivable in the ideal world ; to him, and indeed to every 

 Christian, the full realization of the Kingdom of God involves 

 not only righteousness but peace — peace in the individual, 

 peace between man and man, peace in the relations of nation 

 to nation. But how is this ideal to be made real ? what does 

 the history of the past tell us of efforts made with that end 

 more or less consciously in view ? how far have they succeeded,, 

 and where have they failed ? 



^ Lord Curzon of Kedleston, Frontiers, pp. 50, 52. 



