And first, there is one thing very obvious, and that is the necessity for some controlling world authority if treaties are to be respected and war abolished. While there are numerous sovereign States in the world each absolutely free to do what it chooses, to arm its people or repudiate engagements, there can be no sure peace. But great multitudes of those who sincerely desire peace forever cannot realize this. There are, for example, many old-fashioned English liberals who denounce militarism and "treaty entanglements" with equal ardor; they want Britain to stand alone, unaggressive, but free; not realizing that such an isolation is the surest encouragement to any war-enamored power. Exactly the same type is to be found in the United States, and is probably even more influential there. But only by so spinning a web of treaties that all countries are linked by general obligations to mutual protection can a real world-pacification be achieved. The present alliance against the insufferable militarism of Germany may very probably be the precursor of a much wider alliance against any aggression whatever in the future. Only through some such arrangement is there any reasonable hope of a control and cessation of that constant international bickering and pressure, that rivalry in finance, that competition for influence in weak neutral countries, which has initiated all the struggles of the last century, and which is bound to accumulate tensions for fresh wars so long as it goes on. Already several States, and particularly the Government of the United States of America, have signed treaties of arbitration, and The Hague Tribunal spins a first web of obligations, exemplary if gossamer, between the countries of the world. But these are but the faint initial suggestions of much greater possibilities, and it is these greater possibilities that have now to be realized if all the talk we have had about a war to end war is to bear any fruit. What is now with each week of the present struggle becoming more practicable is the setting up of a new assembly that will take the place of the various embassies and diplomatic organizations, of a mediaeval pattern and tradition, which have hitherto conducted international affairs.