"The 'Governments' will never initiate such institutions until compelled by public opinion and by the inevitable pressure of circumstances, nor is any nation in the world yet ripe to put forth such pressure; otherwise it would not be difficult to devise a supreme court, or rather jury, which would put a totally new moral aspect on war." [Footnote: _Ethics of War_, Francis W. Newman.] He goes on to say that a great many wars might have been avoided by us if we had been willing, which we are not, to submit to arbitration; and he urges that war should be "declared _in the Capital... with the formal assent of Lords and Commons_." Under the present system, as he points out, when war is declared against any country, it is not a necessity, as it was in the fourteenth century, that Parliament should be applied to for consent and approval when the King of England wished to make war. Later, Henry V asked Parliament what it would advise in "matters of foreign embroilment"; and when the King of France wanted to make peace with him, he would do nothing in the matter until his _Parliament_ had told him "what will be most profitable and honourable to do in the matter." But to-day, in arranging to make war or to make peace, it is the Cabinet-- the two or three in the inner Chamber--who take all responsibility upon themselves. As often as not their decision is largely influenced by party questions--and the questions do _not_ depend on the morality of the war, whether the reason for it is a just one or no. "It is the singular disgrace of modern England, [Footnote: _Deliberations before War_, Francis Newman, 1859.] to have allowed the solemn responsibility of war to be tampered with by the arbitrary judgment of executive officers; ... the nation permits war to be made, lives by the twenty thousand or fifty thousand to be sacrificed, provinces to be confiscated, and permanent empire over foreign subjects established, at the secret advice of a Cabinet, _all of one party, acting collectively for party objects_, no one outside knowing how each has voted." Yet "the whole nation is implicated in a war, when once it is undertaken, inasmuch as we all have the same national disgrace, if it is unjust; the same suffering, if it is tedious; the same loss, if it is expensive"; and all the time, "according to the current morality of Christendom, two nations may be engaged in deadly struggle, and _neither be in the wrong_."