While, therefore, the most impressive political events of the nineteenth century have been the expression and the successful realization of nationalism, many powerful undercurrents of internationalism have been gathering force.  The pressures of civilization have been more and more towards extra-national activities.  Thoughtful men and women in our time recognize the urgent need of closer international communion for three related purposes:  First, the consolidation, extension, and effective sanction of the existing body of international law; secondly, the establishment of peace on a basis of reliable methods for the just settlement of differences; thirdly, the provision of regular accepted means for the co-operation of nations in all sorts of positive constructive work for the human commonwealth.

These general considerations I will ask you to regard as introductory to the grave practical question which confronts us.  Is this essential work of internationalism consistent with the preservation of the sovereignty and independence of the present national state, or does its performance involve some definite cession of these national state-rights to the requirements of an international government?

The terrible events which are passing to-day ripen and sharpen this issue.  They bring into powerful relief the inherent defects of an international polity based upon the absolute independence of the several states, and the futile mechanical balances and readjustments by which foreign policy has been conducted hitherto.  But how far do they offer assistance or security for the achievement of organic reform?  After this war has come to a close, will the nations and governments be enabled to lay a sound basis for pacific settlement of disputes and for active co-operation in the common cause of humanity for the future?  No confident answer to this question is possible.  For nobody can predict the composition and the relative strength of the feelings and ideas which will constitute ‘the state of mind’ of the several nations and their statesmen.  As regards immediate or early policy, much will, of course, depend upon the definiteness of the victory and defeat, and the consequent distribution and intensity of the passions of elation and depression, anger and revenge, which peace may leave behind.  It is, of course, part of the fighting strength of every belligerent to persuade himself that an overwhelming victory for himself affords the best security of peace and progress in the future.  But this conclusion, based on the prior assumption, equally liable to error, that one’s own cause is entirely right and one’s enemy’s entirely wrong, is unlikely to be sound.  A peace which brings the least intensity of triumph and humiliation, the most even distribution of gains and losses, would seem to give an atmosphere most favourable to the growth of pacific internationalism.  This, of course, will be sharply contested, and those who contest it will exhibit the usual excessive confidence of those whose mind moves in a shut oven of heated but unmeaning phrases about fighting to a finish, crushing German militarism, and ’a war to end war’.  But there is no stronger evidence of the intellectual and moral havoc of war than the easy acceptance of what Ruskin called ’masked words’ in lieu of thinking.