People thought that Italy could not be united, that the duchies of Germany would never join. Cavour and Bismark had indeed no easy part. But if one hundred millions of people in Central Europe can be made to see the evils of separation, cannot others? With our greater facilities of communication, with our increased commercial intercourse and our increased realization of the interdependence of nations (a manufacturing nation cannot get along without the food-producing nations, etc.), this ought not now to be impossible. Or has the single state exhausted our political ability? Are we willing to acknowledge this? We have had very little idea yet of a community of nations. The great fault of Germany is not that she overestimates her own power of achievement, which is indeed marvellous, but that she has never yet had any conception of a community of nations. Let her apply all her own theory of the subordination of the individual to the whole to the subordination of Germany to an allied Europe, and she would be a most valuable member of a European league. The group process thus shows us that a genuine community of nations means the correlation of interests, the development of an international ethics, the creation of an international will, the self-evolving of a higher loyalty, and above all and including all, the full responsibility of every nation for the welfare of every other. With such an aim before us courts of arbitration seem a sorry makeshift. We are told that as individuals no longer fight duels but take their disputes into the courts, so nations must now arbitrate, that is, take their dispute to some court. But what has really ousted duels has not been the courts but a different conception of the relation between men; so what will do away with war will not be courts of arbitration, but a different conception of the relations between nations. We need machinery not merely for settling disputes but for preventing disputes from arising; not merely for interpreting past relations, but for giving expression to new relations; not merely to administer international law, but to make international law—not a Hague court but an international legislature. A community of nations needs a constitution, not treaties. Treaties are of the same nature as contract. Just as in internal law contract is giving way to the truer theory of community, so the same change must take place in international law. It is true that the first step must be more progressive treaties before we can hope for a closer union, but let us keep clearly before us the goal in order that in making these treaties they shall be such that they will open the way in time to a real federation, to an international law based not on “sovereign” nations.