When, therefore, we ask whether it is not possible to extend and consolidate the agreements between so-called sovereign states into some form of effective international government, we broach a proposition less revolutionary in substance than in sound.  If all the separate treaties, conventions, and other agreements, existing now between pairs of nations for the performance of specific acts and the settlement of differences, were modified and gathered into the forms of general treaties signed by all the treaty-making states; if all international laws and usages were codified and brought under the surveillance of some single representative court or council,—­we should discover that there existed already the substance of an international government, not indeed adequate to our needs, but far ampler than we had suspected.  In the Hague conventions and courts, again, and in certain other intergovernmental instruments, such as the Postal and Telegraphic Bureaux at Berne, we already possess the nucleus of the general forms required.  We possess already the beginnings alike of the legislative, judicial, and administrative apparatus of international government.  But it is slight in substance, fragmentary in its application, and exceedingly imperfect in its sanctions.  Moreover, it has just shown itself quite inadequate to perform the first function of a government, viz. to keep the public peace.

The task of converting so feeble a structure of government into an effective instrument of international peace and progress is evidently one of great magnitude and difficulty.  But it is the task which lies persistently before us, and upon its performance the safety of civilization itself depends.  It is, therefore, well not to exaggerate its difficulties, but to measure them as closely as we can.  This can best be done by means of a brief survey of the principal lines of advance which have been proposed.  In this country, in America, in Holland, and elsewhere, the air is thickening with schemes for obtaining better international relations after the war.  All of them have this, I think, in common, that they concern themselves primarily not with ideal or practical plans for the general co-operation of nations in advancing the welfare of the world, but with methods of preventing future wars and securing relief against the burden of armaments.  All agree that some general formal arrangements between nations must be substituted for ’the clash of competing ambitions, of groupings and alliances and a precarious equipoise’, and that only by such stable agreement can disarmament be got and peace rendered secure.  All agree that the instrument of this international government must be a general treaty to which a number of states must be parties and that the terms of this treaty must require them to submit all forms of disputes to some pacific mode of settlement.  Nearly all, moreover, accept the distinction drawn between justiciable issues, relating to the application or interpretation of laws or to the ascertainment of facts by means of legal evidence, which are suitable for settlement by a judicial or arbitral process, and those which, not being capable of such settlement, are better suited for a looser process of inquiry and conciliation.