We should thus remove the last serious obstacle to the reform, and the work might advance rapidly. The tribunal, as I said, exists, and has had more experience than is generally realised. The Hague Conference of 1907 established a Prize Court, with permanent salaried judges, and an Arbitration Court. A large number of very grave quarrels have since been adjusted by this tribunal, and, as Professor Schücking observes, "more than a hundred contracts between States have been concluded in which, on each occasion, two States made the Arbitration Court obligatory." But, largely owing to the opposition of Germany and the general apathy, the Court remained optional, and the Powers maintained their armies for the settlement of quarrels in the old barbaric manner. The next and last step is for all the Powers to recognise the Court as compulsory, and to furnish it with an executive (a small international army and navy) for the enforcement of its decisions. Our vast armies and navies then become superfluous and would be disbanded simultaneously, leaving only a small force in each country for the suppression of native aggression (with the consent of the Hague Court) and for use by the Court itself to enforce its verdicts or suppress illegal attempts to arm. There is nothing Utopian or academic about this reform. A body of high-minded lawyers and statesmen have for years discussed the details of the scheme, and are ready to launch it whenever the various Governments are compelled by public opinion to adopt it. The immediate task is to create this pressure of public opinion. We may hope that, after our ghastly lesson in the price of the military method, we shall no longer be rebuffed with vapid phrases like: "Do not force the pace." A business-man who talked nonsense of that kind would soon find his level. We need to conduct our national and international life on business-principles, to get rid as speedily as possible of a waste and disorder which are an outrage on the intelligence of the race. I look more confidently to business-men than to speech-making politicians and sentimental moralists for the triumph of the reform. Certain industries will, of course, be gravely dislocated, even annihilated, by the change; and vast bodies of additional workers will, in most countries, be thrown upon a crowded labour-market. From the abstract economical point of view it is only a question of transfer. Fifty millions which were spent on military industries will now be used in enlarging other industries or creating new. In reality there will be grave confusion; but that is due to the utterly disorganised nature of our industrial world, which I discuss later. In any case to allege this industrial difficulty as a serious reason against disarmament is a very singular piece of folly. The cost and trouble of adjusting this temporary dislocation would be infinitely less than the cost and trouble of a war.