Their scheme is to gather together the powers of the earth into a peace league, the members of which will pool their military and naval strength for the common good. No country will thereafter be permitted to make war upon another until certain measures of prevention have been taken and certain formalities observed, all with a view to settling the trouble in a peaceful way. If a government transgresses, the whole world will immediately jump on its back. This is an extension of the international police idea of visionaries who only a short year ago were still telling the world that conflicts between great powers were at an end and that establishments for the prosecution of war might henceforth be limited to police armaments for keeping in order the smaller and less civilized nations such as the Balkan states and Mexico. Naturally the European war has smashed this illusion. But it has not discouraged the illusionists. A very important defect in the League of Peace scheme is that it cannot be guaranteed to work, and a plan of this sort which cannot be guaranteed is likely to become a greater menace to peace through backfire than no agreement at all. It means a close association and conflict of unmixable interests and ambitions which are sure to create friction of a most inflammatory sort. Suppose the United States and Japan and the great powers of Europe and the A. B. C. alliance join this league. Suppose after the league is duly organized two of the most powerful states, states relatively as strong as Germany and Russia were at the outset of the present war, get into a wrangle. Suppose they disregard their promises and incontinently go to war. How are they to be stopped and disciplined? Only through a general world war beside which the one now in progress might sink into insignificance. The whole population of the globe might be obliged to fight in order to keep the peace. A great defect in all these schemes of peace promotors and disarmament enthusiasts is that they hope to create an artificial condition of placidity without natural incentive, and fail to take into account the element of self-interest which alone can make a peace pact of practical value. Alliances, ententes and treaties among nations having common interests have played large parts in the history of the world and have led to prolonged periods of peace as well as to bloody wars, but they generally have been enduring and valuable in close proportion to the strength of their appeal to self-interest among the parties concerned. THE IDEALS OF PEACE AND THE REALITIES OF WAR =WAR AND THE IDEALS OF PEACE.= By HENRY RUTGERS MARSHALL, L. H. D., D. S. published by Duffield & Co. New York.