friendly spirit depended on all parties being generally content with the present condition of affairs; Germany was not content, and so the _entente_ idea was balked. Under the League the nations are already forming a habit of consultation and coöperation on non-controversial matters which should be of immense help in dealing with differences when they arise. Another great formative idea was contributed by General Smuts, the principle of the mandate. He foresaw that there would be at the end of the war an immense appropriation of tropical colonies; he knew that the rivalry of the Great Powers for the possession of such colonies was one of the chief sources of international strife; and he saw that the right outlet was to put an end to the treatment of colonies as "possessions" or mere sources of wealth to the colonizing Power. The populations that are not able to stand alone should be taken in trust by the whole League of Nations, which should appoint a particular Power in each particular case to carry out the trust. Again, the great stirring of discontent among the labouring classes in almost all parts of the world led to the formation of a special International Commission on Labour, which has so far met with great success. It will in general have the effect of raising the conditions of the most backward peoples to something like the level of the best. And lastly, when all these things were in train, the policy for which both Great Britain and the late Czar of Russia had striven so long and vainly would at last become feasible, and the nations might consent to disarm. Thus the Covenant of the League, an unpretentious but well-considered document, the result of repeated criticism and study by many of the best minds in Europe and America, attempts to meet and check all the visible and predictable causes of war. There should be no wars of ambition. They are to be met by absolute coercion. The League can make it certain that deliberate war undertaken for national aggrandizement will end, not in profit, but in ruinous loss. There should be no wars caused by the irresistible desire to escape from foreign oppression or intolerable conditions. They are made unnecessary by provisions enabling any oppressed nation to lay its case before the Assembly or Council and obtain such redress as the most disinterested tribunal can give. A war which is caused by the emergence of some clash of interest or unforeseen dispute between two states cannot, in the nature of things, be made absolutely impossible. The League opposes to that danger, not a blank wall, but, as it were, a series of springs calculated to exhaust its force; a court for points of law, mediation for points of policy, compulsory delay and reconsideration for all disputes whatsoever. It will be a strange dispute which, given honest intentions on both sides, lasts through all the checks provided by Articles XII to XVII and plunges nations into war at the end of them.