534 
THE AME RICAN-SC AN DIN AVIAN REVIEW 
It is significant how the basic principles of Alfred Nobel are re¬ 
peated in the covenant of the League of Nations. I have already 
quoted the words in his testament regarding the means to attain the 
brotherhood of nations: the reduction of armaments and peace con¬ 
gresses. The reduction of armaments along the whole line is now, 
although in a careful form, positively recommended in article 8; while 
the annual meetings of the League must be regarded as official peace 
congresses of a nature so binding upon the members that only a quar¬ 
ter of a century ago most statesmen would have regarded them as 
utopian. 
Yet the similarity of thought goes even farther than this. In 
her speech here in Christiania in 1906 Bertha von Suttner quoted from 
a private letter written by Nobel to her: “We could and should soon 
get to the point where all states would bind themselves as a body to 
use force upon any one state that attacked another. This would make 
war impossible and would compel even the most brutal and unreason¬ 
able power to appeal to a court of arbitration or keep quiet. If the 
Triple Alliance embraced all nations instead of three, peace would 
be assured for centuries.” 
Here we meet the principle of sanction in its extremest form. 
It has had to be softened in article 16 of the agreement—{fortunately. 
And at the meeting last year it was decided, upon the initiative of the 
Scandinavian states, that the absolute form of the clause regarding 
the duty of sanction had to be modified and defined. Yet the basic 
principle of Nobel is realized. Against the one who breaks the peace 
the united power of the League will be turned with a pressure that in¬ 
creases according to the need. Without entering upon any “super¬ 
state” organization for which the time is not yet ripe, we nevertheless 
approach, as nearly as the conditions allow, to that administration 
of justice by which the national governments, at an earlier stage, 
maintained their supremacy over private lords who were not accus¬ 
tomed to recognize any authority except their own. 
What has just been said about a league of all nations instead 
of only a few should admonish us not to weary of the demand which 
we small, formerly neutral nations have an especial duty to uphold 
in Genoa as well as everywhere else: The League of Nations must 
become universal in order to fulfill its mission. No nation is so great 
that it can permanently remain outside of a more and more universal 
League of Nations, but it is in the nature of the case that the smaller 
states have an especially compelling reason for doing all in their 
power to promote its maintenance and development. The equality 
of all the members of the League, which is anchored in the clause 
giving each state only one vote, can not annul the actual inequality 
of strength. The great powers who lead the development of the world 
for good or for ill, actuated by mixed motives, toward a higher hu- 
