there is no international society nor can political machinery create it. Only in rare instances are new social traditions created by legal enactments. Political forms and legal measures are usually belated recognitions of previously established social facts and necessities. The problem of group relations in modern society is as difficult as it is because natural causes have operated to make the social units larger and larger while no ideal forces have been strong enough to prompt the group to enter into ethical relations with other groups. If a higher degree of imagination than now seems probable does not inform the life of modern nations only, one further step is possible—the consolidation of continents. In such an eventuality the present League of Nations could easily become the instrument of pan-Europeanism in conflict with other Continents. A society of nations is impossible, in short, without those ultra-rational attitudes which either instinct or religion must create and which in the case of this final venture is beyond the resources of natural instincts—except in the event of a threat from some other planetary community. If the creation of an international society is a task to which moral and spiritual resources must contribute, its maintenance and development are no less dependent upon the coöperation of spiritual insight with political prudence. Even at best human nature is so imperfect and relations between groups as well as individuals so fruitful in misunderstandings that it is impossible to maintain the mutual trust and confidence which are the basis of society without the spiritual achievement of mutual repentance and forgiveness. In the relation between groups the ability to detect flaws in one’s own and extenuating circumstances in the actions and attitudes of others is at once more necessary and more difficult than in intra-group relations. It is more difficult because the intricacy and long range of the relations, and the inevitable hypocrisy in the pretensions of governments, easily obscure the limitations of one and the virtues and good intentions of the other party of the relationship. It is more necessary because the frictions which fret the relations of national and other groups are much more generally due to mutual guilt than those of individual relations. They develop in a narrow world and in a society of but few members in which a suspected peril may lead to a gesture of defense, the defensive measure be regarded as offensive and in turn prompt an actual attack which will be justified in turn as a defensive measure. Thus fears produce hatreds, hatreds express themselves in ugly grimaces and someone finally strikes the first blow. The World War resulted from a spontaneous combustion of fears and hatreds, and the partial mobilizations, full mobilizations and final declarations of war are so intimately related to each other that impartial historians find it increasingly difficult and