Is a world federation possible? The question under consideration is not if a world federation will be realizable after the efflux of centuries or millenniums, but will a world federation be a practical program as a part or as a sequel of the settlement of the present war when it shall have run its course? Even the limited answer which will be attempted must depend on the character of that settlement. If the settlement is such as to leave deep-seated grievances - whether illfounded or not in the heart of a powerful state, the probabilities of future war will cancel the possibilities of peace. Such grievance may be also a serious stumbling-block to the creation of any sort of international federation.

A celebrated modern instance proves the point. In 1871 Germany by force separated Alsace-Lorraine from France. France has not forgiven or forgotten, and France continued to be a powerful state. A treaty of peace did not wipe out this deep-seated grievance. The tongue consented, but the mind revolted. It is true that Kant in his Entwurf zum ewigen Frieden, taught that there should not be a hidden reservation of future war as to a matter adjudicated by treaty. Neither this benign and thoroughly legalistic precept nor the treaty of adjudication has been sufficient after a lapse of nearly fifty years to destroy in the minds of French statesmen and of many inhabitants of the lost provinces a feeling of irreparable injury.

A world federation is possible if too much is not expected. We have already what is a world federation in the Postal Union. A federation as such for various purposes is clearly realizable; but a federation with any kind of a program involving something more than arithmetic and accounting must be considered at the outset to be of questionable present utility even if such a federation could be formally organized.

A good illustration of the difficulty is afforded by the Hague Convention on Bills of Exchange and Promissory Notes. There was sufficient good will, and the subject itself was emotionally colorless, but complete agreement, chiefly because of two forms of legal habits which could not be reconciled, was impossible. The law of bills of exchange is par excellence a field where a distribution and evaluation of interests does not appear. It is a department of law essentially with

out justice. Regulation is sufficient. For the merchant and banker it is indifferent (having regard for convenience) whether an indorser, for example, can be bound by one ceremonial or another. And yet the opposing camps could not agree on what after all was only ceremony, because these rituals had in certain particulars become a part of differing folkways. One camp would cut slices from the sacrificial bullock making a double fold with raw collops; the other would have triple folds with Lesbian roots brayed in a mortar.

If this thing was impossible, how much more impossible is a permanent international court, a league of conciliation, a league to enforce peace, or any other sort of league which is to make nations and states good, pious, and, especially, unwarlike? No one knows. That the Treaty of Westphalia and that the Holy Alliance (a propitious name!) did not harmonize the world afford nothing but bad examples. Like cases at law, they are worth no more than their facts.

When we ask if a world federation is possible, we mean, of course, will it be usefully realizable when the slaughter-house episodes which are hardening the entire world to the most robust ideas will have ended. We must answer that we do not know absolutely; but the background of our information of what group human nature is constituted leads us to think that the idea is prima facie unworkable. That, of course, the idea eventually, in some hundreds or thousands of years, will be realized admits of no element of rational doubt.

That the problem of realization at this time—at the end of the present war-admits of doubt is sufficient to justify any effort made to solve it, even against the overwhelming probabilities which forbid expectation or even hope. The future day of accomplishment at least will be hastened by years or centuries by the efforts of the many in the present. There can be little doubt that all civilized states would gladly embrace the opportunity to end war if their vital interests could at the same time be secured; or, more accurately, if the various states could be convinced that by an arrangement other than resort to arms their natural powers of development would not be subjected to artificial and disadvantageous limitations. There seems to be a view, it is true, not alone expressed by isolated individuals in Germany, that "the sterilization begotten of a long peace is as much the nemesis

of a nation as the vainglory of a Napoleon." There seems to be a view, it must be acknowledged (and one does not need to resort to the Machtpolitiker Clauss Wagner to find it), that "war is necessary to mankind; and that all history shows it to be inevitable." It is difficult to believe, however, that this view is representative in any country of the thought of but a small minority. This is not to deny the undeniable, that the imperfections of human nature and the lack of international organization have in combination made war inevitable, or that perpetual struggle and competition have been an important factor- a factor not to be eliminated this side of Nirvana -in social and political development.

For an understanding of the problem something would be gained by an inspection of the field of private law in its evolution. There are certain striking similarities between states and clans. There also is an important difference in that there is not found among states, as among most contiguous clans of primitive law, blood relationship which of itself leads by a natural process to tribal organization, and later to a folk system. There is another feature peculiar to state relations in the modern age, in that the arbitral idea, which does not normally appear in primitive law antecedent to the era of tribal chieftainry, is highly developed and very commonly practiced by states. According to Darby, there were six arbitrations in the eighteenth century, 471 in the nineteenth century, and 63 from 1900 to 1903. The increased ratio continued to be maintained up to the beginning of the war. The character of the development is shown by the record of the cases decided by the Permanent Court at The Hague and the matters referred to Commissions of Inquiry under the Hague Convention of 1907.

These two anomalies in the present relations of states a clan organization without inter-clan blood ties and the development in that low order of social organization of the arbitral idea-indicate that the relations of states are sui generis and that the usual evolutionary development, which seems to govern social organization and the growth of private law, will not necessarily determine the organization of states. The composition-system stage has ethically and intellectually long been passed, while at the same time the primitive

remedy of pignoris capio or reprisal remains a standard resort in international law. The civitas maxima is also by the same reasoning beyond the range of possibility. And, as the relations of states are sui generis, so also will their organizations be sui generis. An inspection of primitive institutions will, however, be valuable in showing what may be expected of the future.

The crucial question is whether a society of nations may be successfully organized without first passing through the series of phases which regimented savage and barbarian societies. In savagery, the regimentation, according to Powell, is families organized into clans (reckoning kinship in the female line), and clans sometimes into tribes (reckoning kinship in the male or female line together with affinity), and tribes into confederacies. In barbarism, according to the same authority, the series is families, gentes (reckoning kinship in the male line), tribes, and confederacies. It is clear that if the evolution is to be the same, an intermediate step must be accomplished before confederation can be attained, or that a substitute must be found. The analogues representing the differences between clans and gentes do not readily appear, while other features, such as similarity of law, language, and political forms, trade relations, etc., may perhaps be found as representatives of some of the characteristics of primitive regimentation. The organization of the British Empire, treaties of mutual support in war, and intermarriage among royal houses are facts which clearly show the tendency of states to break the narrow barriers of independent clan organization. Only a detailed study of tribal society and a like study of modern societies to discover similar or analogous functions and forms would suffice to project clearly the path and intensity of the natural evolution toward the realization of a confederacy of states. In the meantime, however, this natural process of development may perhaps be aided and abbreviated by conscious efforts.

What is the present maximum possibility of world organization? To answer the question, one may speculate, and as mere speculation one guess may be as good as another, depending on one's bent of mind. The hopeful man will not stop short of a revised United States Constitution with seven articles and a Bill of Rights, to which should be superadded a Declaration of Independence from Human Nature.

Less hopeful minds will suggest some form of a Coercive League of Arbitration of Liberal Nations, or, diminuendo, a Council of Conciliation, etc., etc. It is likely enough that any plan will fail for concreteness of any kind and that no plan devised by the wit of man will achieve its planned purpose. If it succeeds, its success will be lost beyond recovery in a heterogeneity of ends.

What then is the maximum possibility? The answer may be given. after the fashion set by the Delphic oracle, as the minimum possibility. The minimum possibility is a world organization not with a plan, but a world organization with a purpose - the purpose of finding a workable substitute for the costly and cumbersome appeal to

arms.

If the United States should invite the powerful states of the world to a conference in the United States and should put at the disposal of this conference, say a hundred million dollars, to take such steps as a permanent conference as it might find desirable and possible to eliminate the function of force in the adjustment of interstate concerns, is there any reason to believe that any one of the forty-odd sovereign states would not gladly respond, if the sending of official representatives involved no actual delegation of power but simply the sending of agents with power to assist in formulating proposals? Yes, it is entirely possible that the bruises of war unforgotten and unforgiven would cause a now enemy state or group of states to stand apart. It is also possible that a state would, because of what may fall from the lap of war, rather reserve the resort to club law until it was more favorably circumstanced. The possessor is willing to invest possession with the title of ownership, but the disseizee has no respect for a statute of limitations whether short or long. This much of the possibility concerns future events, and the answer must lie with the prophet and the soothsayer.

The necessary good will, the initiative, and the justifying results have already twice been demonstrated in the Hague Conferences of 1899 and 1907. The first conference represented twenty-six of the Powers, and the second represented all the sovereign states except Abyssinia, Costa Rica, and Honduras, a total of forty-four Powers. There was lacking, however, a feature in these conferences highly