A conference is an excellent thing. The proposal of a league to enforce peace by no means excludes it; but the important matter, the effective principle, is that every member of the league should know that whether a conference meets or not, or whatever action it may take or fail to take, all the members of the league have pledged themselves to declare war forthwith on any member that commits a breach of the peace before submitting its case to the international tribunal or council of conciliation. Such a pledge, and such a pledge alone, can have the strong deterrent influence, and thus furnish the sanction, that is needed. Of course the pledge may not be kept. Like other treaties it may be broken by the parties to it. Nations are composed of human beings with human weaknesses, and one of these is a disinclination to perform an agreement when it involves a sacrifice. Nevertheless, nations, like men, often do have enough sense of honor, of duty, or of ultimate self-interest, to carry out their contracts at no little immediate sacrifice. They are certainly more likely to do a thing if they have pledged themselves to it than if they have not; and any nation would be running a terrible risk that went to war in the hope that the other members of the league would break their pledges. [Sidenote: The threats of universal war and boycott.] The same objection applies to another alternative proposed in place of an immediate resort to military force: that is the use of economic pressure, by a universal agreement, for example, to have no commercial intercourse with the nation breaking the peace. A threat of universal boycott is, no doubt, formidable, but by no means so formidable as a threat of universal war. A large country with great natural resources which has determined to make war, might be willing to face commercial non-intercourse with the other members of the league during hostilities, when it would not for a moment contemplate the risk of fighting them. A threat, for example, by England, France, and Germany to stop all trade with the United States might or might not have prevented our going to war with Spain; but a declaration that they would take part with all their armies and navies against us would certainly have done so. It has often been pointed out that the threat of general non-intercourse would bear much more hardly on some countries than on others. That may not in itself be a fatal objection, but a very serious consideration arises from the fact that there would be a premium on preparation for war. A nation which had accumulated vast quantities of munitions, food, and supplies of all kinds, might afford to disregard it; while another less fully prepared could not.