But this new Great Society is as yet formless and inarticulate.  It is not only devoid of common leadership and a common government; it lacks even the beginnings of a common will, a common emotion, and a common consciousness.  Of the Great Society, consciously or unconsciously, we must all perforce be members; but of the Great State, the great World-Commonwealth, we do not yet discern the rudiments.  The economic organisation of the world has outstripped the development of its citizenship and government:  the economic man, with his farsighted vision and scientific control of the resources of the world, must sit by and see the work of his hands laid in ashes by contending governments and peoples.  No man can say how many generations must pass before the platitudes of the market and the exchange pass into the current language of politics.

Sec.8. The Two Roads of Advance:  Inter-State Action and Common Citizenship.—­In the great work which lies before the statesmen and peoples of the world for the extension of law and common citizenship and the prevention of war there are two parallel lines of advance.

One road lies through the development of what is known as International, but should more properly be called Inter-State Law, through the revival, on a firmer and broader foundation, of the Concert of Europe conceived by the Congress of Vienna just a hundred years ago—­itself a revival, on a secular basis, of the great mediaeval ideal of an international Christendom, held together by Christian Law and Christian ideals.  That ideal faded away for ever at the Reformation, which grouped Europe into independent sovereign States ruled by men responsible to no one outside their own borders.  It will never be revived on an ecclesiastical basis.  Can we hope for its revival on a basis of modern democracy, modern nationality, and modern educated public opinion?  Can Inter-State Law, hitherto a mere shadow of the majestic name it bears, almost a matter of convention and etiquette, with no permanent tribunal to interpret it, and no government to enforce it, be enthroned with the necessary powers to maintain justice between the peoples and governments of the world?

Such a Law the statesmen of Great Britain and Russia sought to impose on Europe in 1815, to maintain a state of affairs which history has shown to have been intolerable to the European peoples.  There are those who hope that the task can be resumed, on a better basis, at the next Congress.  “Shall we try again,” writes Professor Gilbert Murray,[1] “to achieve Castlereagh’s and Alexander’s ideal of a permanent Concert, pledged to make collective war upon the peace-breaker?  Surely we must.  We must, at all costs and in spite of all difficulties, because the alternative means such unspeakable failure.  We must learn to agree, we civilised nations of Europe, or else we must perish.  I believe that the chief council of wisdom here is to be sure to go far enough.  We need a permanent Concert, perhaps a permanent Common Council, in which every awkward problem can be dealt with before it has time to grow dangerous, and in which outvoted minorities must accustom themselves to giving way.”