institutions. How many states, for instance, recognise or put into practice a really representative system of government? COMPULSORY ARBITRATION If we turn to the programme of the pacifists, we shall be confronted by similar difficulties. Pacifism, as such, involves an appeal to all the democracies, asking them to come into line, as it were, for the execution of certain definite projects intended to seek peace and ensure it. The first stage of the peace movement is the general recognition of the principle of arbitration between states. That first period has, we may take it, been already realised. The second stage is the recognition of compulsory arbitration. When, in 1907, the second Hague Conference was held, this principle was supported by thirty-two different states, representing more than a thousand million human beings. Something like three or four hundred millions remained not yet prepared to admit the principle in its entirety. I may remark in passing that the verbal acceptance of a general principle is one thing, the application, as we have lately had much reason to discover, is quite another. We may recognise, however, that this second stage of the pacifist programme has, undoubtedly, made large advances. But of course it must necessarily be followed by its consequence, a third stage which shall ensure respect for, and obedience to arbitration verdicts. Recalcitrant states will have to be coerced, and the one thing that can coerce them is an international police administered by an international executive power. That is to say, we must have a parliament of parliaments, a universal parliament, the representatives of which must be selected by the different constituent members of the United States of Europe. When this has been done, and only when this has been done, can we arrive at a fourth stage, that of a general disarmament. In the millennium that is to be it is only the international police which shall be allowed to use weapons of war in order to execute the decrees of the central parliament representing the common European will. DEMOCRATIC UNANIMITY Here we have all the old difficulties starting anew, and especially the main one--democratic unanimity. How far the democracies of the European Commonwealth can work in unison is one of the problems which the future will have to solve. At present they, obviously, do not do so. The Social Democrats of Germany agreed to make war on the democrats of other countries. Old instincts were too strong for them. For it must always be remembered that only so far as a cosmopolitan spirit takes the place of narrow national prejudices can we hope to reach the level of a common conscience, or a common will of Europe. And are we prepared to say that national prejudices _ought_ to be obliterated and ignored? The very principle of nationality forbids it.