Little attention has been given here to the machinery of internationalism--League of Nations, Courts of Arbitration, Disarmament. This is not because machinery is unimportant. But if we possessed the Will, if we were ready each to pay his contribution in some sacrifice of his independence, of his opportunity of domination, the difficulties of machinery would largely disappear. The story of America's essay in internationalism has warned us of the real difficulty. Courts of Arbitration, Leagues of Nations, were devices to which American opinion readily enough agreed; too readily. For the event showed that the old conceptions were not changed. They had only been disregarded. No machinery of internationalism can work so long as the impulses and prepossessions of irresponsible nationalism retain their power. The test we must apply to our sincerity is our answer to the question:--What price, in terms of national independence, are we prepared to pay for a world law? What, in fact, _is_ the price that is asked of us? To this last question, the pages that precede, and to some extent those that follow, have attempted to supply an answer. We should gain many times in freedom and independence the contribution in those things that we made. Perhaps we may be driven by hunger--the actual need of our children for bread--to forsake a method which cannot give them bread or freedom, in favour of one that can. But, for the failure of power to act as a deterrent upon our desire for it, we must perceive the failure. Our angers and hatreds obscure that failure, or render us indifferent to it. Hunger does not necessarily help the understanding; it may bemuse it by passion and resentment. We may in our passion wreck civilisation as a passionate man in his anger will injure those he loves. Yet, well fed, we may refuse to concern ourselves with problems of the morrow. The mechanical motive will no longer suffice. In the simpler, more animal forms of society, the instinct of each moment, with no thought of ultimate consequence, may be enough. But the Society which man has built up can only go forward or be preserved as it began: by virtue of something which is more than instinct. On man is cast the obligation to be intelligent; the responsibility of will; the burden of thought.